TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceiving, Navigating and Inhabiting
T2 - Performance design through sonic strategies
AU - Abrantes, Eduardo
N1 - Important note from the publisher regarding the attached version of the article: “This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Performance Research. Eduardo Abrantes (2021) Perceiving, Navigating and Inhabiting: Performance design through sonic strategies, Performance Research, 26:3, 31-38, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2021.1977495 . It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.”
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In the intersecting fields of performance, technologically mediated live arts and artistic research, the significant potential of deploying sonic strategies is by now well documented. Sound-driven performance design is becoming widespread due to its efficacy in raising awareness of, critically engaging with and traversing and intervening in the complexities of the everyday. Site-specific embodied approaches in particular, such as binaural field-recording and audiowalk composition, have notably underlined the relational, exchange-oriented constellation of interactions between individual and collective bodies, and their diverse surroundings.The audiowalk format – defined as an immersive soundscape composition, which is anchored in an exploratory embodied perspective and based on listening while interacting with a specific environment – particularly stands out in enabling innovative ways of perceiving, navigating and inhabiting places and communities in contemporary societies. It is implicitly performative, in the sense that the listener’s immediate bodily agency is at stake when a specific choreographic engagement is suggested (following a path and finding your bearings; walking, running, crouching, paying attention to the near and to the far; listening to the layering of composed sounds, local noises leaking in, and “added” sounds brought forth from induced aural imagination). Through a combination of headphone-dedicated aural scenography, choreography, and sound design, the audiowalk activates modes of being embedded in site and situation. This article focuses on presenting and discussing artistic methods and performative strategies developed to counter the aural passivity of everyday listening. It borrows from selected case-studies of artistic production as well as from my own experience as a sound artist creating, researching, and teaching process-oriented sonic strategies for performance design.
AB - In the intersecting fields of performance, technologically mediated live arts and artistic research, the significant potential of deploying sonic strategies is by now well documented. Sound-driven performance design is becoming widespread due to its efficacy in raising awareness of, critically engaging with and traversing and intervening in the complexities of the everyday. Site-specific embodied approaches in particular, such as binaural field-recording and audiowalk composition, have notably underlined the relational, exchange-oriented constellation of interactions between individual and collective bodies, and their diverse surroundings.The audiowalk format – defined as an immersive soundscape composition, which is anchored in an exploratory embodied perspective and based on listening while interacting with a specific environment – particularly stands out in enabling innovative ways of perceiving, navigating and inhabiting places and communities in contemporary societies. It is implicitly performative, in the sense that the listener’s immediate bodily agency is at stake when a specific choreographic engagement is suggested (following a path and finding your bearings; walking, running, crouching, paying attention to the near and to the far; listening to the layering of composed sounds, local noises leaking in, and “added” sounds brought forth from induced aural imagination). Through a combination of headphone-dedicated aural scenography, choreography, and sound design, the audiowalk activates modes of being embedded in site and situation. This article focuses on presenting and discussing artistic methods and performative strategies developed to counter the aural passivity of everyday listening. It borrows from selected case-studies of artistic production as well as from my own experience as a sound artist creating, researching, and teaching process-oriented sonic strategies for performance design.
KW - Performance Design
KW - Sound Art
KW - Sound Studies
KW - Embodiment
KW - Phenomenology
KW - Site-specificity
KW - Audiowalk
KW - Performance Design
KW - Sound Art
KW - Sound Studies
KW - Embodiment
KW - Phenomenology
KW - Site-specificity
KW - Audiowalk
U2 - 10.1080/13528165.2021.1977495
DO - 10.1080/13528165.2021.1977495
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1352-8165
VL - 26
SP - 31
EP - 38
JO - Performance Research: a journal of the performing arts
JF - Performance Research: a journal of the performing arts
IS - 3
ER -