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Technologically-mediated auditory experience: Split horizons

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Abstract

This paper considers the technologically-mediated constitution of auditory experience based on the analogy of a healthy natural soundscape as a well-balanced orchestra in which living creatures use the full range of acoustic frequencies to communicate and survive. Using the idea of (inner) horizonality proposed by Edmund Husserl, I argue that key technological inventions enabling the transmission and recording of sound made possible a new form of experience characterized by split horizonality. This new form of technologically-mediated auditory experience brought with it potential for both creative expression and manipulation. A broader historical trend driven by technology towards individualization that culminated with our present-day experience of constantly connected mobile phones deeply embedded in our everyday lives calls into question the soundness of thinking of our technologically-mediated auditory worlds in terms of the analogy of a healthy natural soundscape as a well-balanced orchestra.

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Notes

  1. Of course, defining the perimeter of community using sound was not an exclusively Christian phenomenon, however, as the drum telegraphy of Africa (Ong, 1977, p. 101; Lewis, 2018) and tropical America (Hillyer Giglioli, 1898) and the call of the Islamic muezzin from the minaret attest.

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This work was supported by Czech Science Foundation grant No. 20-27355S (“Phenomenological Investigations of Sonic Environments”) through the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

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  1. Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy, The Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, Prague, 110 00, Czechia

    Ivan Gutierrez

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Gutierrez, I. Technologically-mediated auditory experience: Split horizons. Phenom Cogn Sci 22, 525–540 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09794-3

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