Abstract
Whether singing, playing an instrument, or dancing, sound has been interactive through most of human history. While the twentieth century has been dominated by linear media such as radio or sound recording, digital technologies reintroduced interactivity into sound culture, offering a plethora of new ways of interacting with sound. The chapter offers an overview of contemporary research into technological and aesthetic aspects of interactive audio from the fields of sound studies, video game studies, media studies, and, to a lesser extent, music sociology and HCI. It concentrates on three principal domains:
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Interactive and participatory sound art
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Sound in immersive media, such as video games and VR (virtual reality)
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Sound practices of online participatory cultures
While at its most basic level interactive audio involves an interplay of sound and movement, sonic interactions necessarily spill into the broader sociocultural context, progressing from interactivity to participation. The chapter thus furthermore explores the ways material (sensory, spatiotemporal, technological) aspects of sound necessarily influence and are in turn influenced by and reimagined through the social processes of participation, approached as a medium of its own. This dialectic is addressed through a media-ecological approach emphasizing the sonic affordances of interactive media works.
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Notes
- 1.
Since the nomenclature differs significantly between different media and art forms, in the following these forms are used somewhat interchangeably.
- 2.
Again in this chapter, the two terms are used somewhat interchangeably, as distinguishing them is not necessarily meaningful in the context of sound art and sonic media (see Keylin 2019).
- 3.
Lars Elleström’s (2021) revised model of intermediality circumvents this problem by redescribing the situation in terms of interacting minds rather than sender and receiver. However, this has the consequence of reinforcing the Cartesian mind-body dualism.
- 4.
Keylin (2019) discusses such applications to participatory sound art.
- 5.
At least as far as the artwork is concerned, since nothing stops the participants from using their mobile devices to share their experience on the Internet, but that would be beyond the borders of the artwork.
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Keylin, V. (2024). Interactive and Participatory Sound. In: Bruhn, J., Azcárate, A.LV., de Paiva Vieira, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28322-2_55
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