ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about the profound, yet always relational, significance of media technologies and processes of mediation by proposing a new approach to methods of studying the mediation of sonic environments and associated human experience. It deals with remarks on the multi-faceted and complexly relational mediations – processes of emergence – of everyday sonic experiences. The chapter examines sensory and atmospheric transformations of sonic environments, situations and experiences require a conception of mediation that extends beyond understanding mediations. The view that experiences are shaped by various dynamics of social belonging and subject positions is widespread in the humanities and in social research on sensory experience. The chapter discusses the state of the art in research on sonic experience, listening and their mediations in sensory studies. Resonating with philosopher Walter Benjamin’s early definitions of aura, sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud defines atmospheres as the sensory incarnation of a “genus loci”.
