ABSTRACT

Body and space refer to vital and interrelated dimensions in the experience of sounds and music. Sounds have an overwhelming impact on feelings of bodily presence and inform us about the space we experience. Even in situations where visual information is artificial or blurred, such as in virtual environments or certain genres of film and computer games, sounds may shape our perceptions and lead to surprising new experiences. This book discusses recent developments in a range of interdisciplinary fields, taking into account the rapidly changing ways of experiencing sounds and music, the consequences for how we engage with sonic events in daily life and the technological advancements that offer insights into state-of-the-art methods and future perspectives. Topics range from the pleasures of being locked into the beat of the music, perception–action coupling and bodily resonance, and affordances of musical instruments, to neural processing and cross-modal experiences of space and pitch. Applications of these findings are discussed for movement sonification, room acoustics, networked performance, and for the spatial coordination of movements in dance, computer gaming and interactive artistic installations.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Structured sounds in bodily and spatial dimensions

part 1|99 pages

Bodily movements, gestures and sonification

part 2|78 pages

Sound design, instrumental affordances and embodied spatial perception

chapter 7|18 pages

Instruments, voices, bodies and spaces

Towards an ecology of performance

chapter 8|21 pages

Sonic spaces in movies

Audiovisual metaphors and embodied meanings in sound design

chapter 9|18 pages

The colourful life of timbre spaces

Timbre concepts from early ideas to meta-timbre space and beyond

chapter 10|21 pages

‘Music as fluid architecture’

Investigating core regions of the spatial brain

part 3|109 pages

Presence and immersion in networked and virtual spaces

chapter 11|22 pages

Music as artificial environment

Spatial, embodied multimodal experience

chapter 13|22 pages

Space and body in sound art

Artistic explorations in binaural audio augmented environments

chapter 15|19 pages

Presence through sound