The sound of locative media: out now

September 28, 2012 at 1:41 pm · Filed under app, audio, audio walk, Digital Culture, GPS, headphones, interactive, listening, mobile phone, music, public, sound studies, sound walk, soundwalk, urban, walking

My journal article The sound of locative media has now been published by Convergence.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this article! The full reference is: Frauke Behrendt (2012) The sound of locative media, Convergence 18 (3): 283-295.

Screenshot from the video of The National Mall app

One of the case studies I discuss in the article is ‘The National Mall’, an iPhone app (released in 2011 by musicians Bluebrain) where users listen to specific music depending on their location.

Here’s the abstract:

This article develops an alternative perspective to the visual bias in locative media discourses by focusing on the role of sound in locative media and related discussions. This sonic perspective allows us to understand the temporal, situated and embodied aspects of locative media. Informed by debates from sound studies and mobile media studies, a locative smart phone application where users experience specific sounds depending on their locations, is discussed. The concept of ‘Placed Sounds’ is introduced for a more detailed analysis of locative sound experiences. A framework for analysis is developed to discuss how locative sound engages with the auditory aspects of our spatial perception, how immersion operates for locative media and sound, and also to consider the role of situated experience, the role of walking as remixing, and how agency and exclusion operate in locative sound. This framework explains how walking operates in terms of interacting with locative media, and how we experience being immersed in physical and media contexts at once via sound.

You can get the full article here.

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