Αναλύοντας την ακουσματική εμπειρία - προς μια πολιτισμική κοινωνιολογία του ήχου

Abstract

This article attempts to examine the socio-cultural significance of sound and of acoustic experience, especially within the late modern communicative environments. Sound is becoming a critical field of contemporary cultural and social practices since it does not only share the same characteristics with late modernity, such as multimodality, virtuality and risk, but also presents performative realities at an individual - collective level, which transcends our overloaded, visual-dominated sense of the world. In discussing the acoustic experience of space, time and the body, we argue that cultural acoustics should elaborate conditions of transformations rather than transmissions of information, experiences and identities. This point is further discussed in relation to: a) electroacoustic technology, which amplifies both objectification and dispersion of sound, b) the medium of television, the moving images of which resemble the psychodynamics of oral experience whereas visual logic of fragmentation is inscribed into televisual sound design, c) the reciprocity of phonocentrism and technocentrism, with references to the 19th century romantic music, Cage’s experimentations and rave culture, d) the interface of man-machine, with reference to kinesonic performances of cyborgs.