ABSTRACT
One of the qualities that audio drama enthusiasts like most about the art form is its lack of images. The absence is a virtue, they claim, because ‘the best pictures are in the head’. However, there are several problems with this view. The main one is it is based on an attempt to compensate for a deficit. It is assumed that perception equals reception, and that the mind or the imagination has relied upon to reinstate the elements that are missing. I argue that philosophy offers an alternative theory of experience with the means to install a richer, less apologetic appreciation of audio drama on the grounds that it recognizes sonic expression to be central to human being in the world. This philosophical theory is phenomenology and, in particular, the ontology articulated by Martin Heidegger, with implications for embodiment pursued by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology has three consequences for audio drama. (1) Heidegger moves attention away from the world as a domain with an appearance towards an interactive condition of being-in-the-world, where sound as the phenomenon produced by interaction becomes a primary form of expression. (2) The concept of technology is redefined, shifting emphasis away from its being a form of means–end thinking and towards being part of our capacity to grapple with the world. This calls attention to the fact our being-in-the-world is a noisy condition, and reminds us that sounds will always be present through the action of one object acting upon another for the construction of a narrative. (3) A radically different theory of sensation is introduced. In place of the traditional emphasis on receiving impressions from an external world, sensation is configured as the disclosure of a world to a body that is already part of the world. This is explored in chapter 4.
