Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2012
The history of sonic arts is charged with transgressive practices that seek to expose the social, aural and cultural thresholds across various listening experiences, posing new questions in terms of the dialogue between listener and place. Recent work in sonic art exposes the need for an experiential understanding of listening that foregrounds the use of new personal technologies, environmental philosophy and the subject–object relationship. This paper aims to create a vocabulary that better contextualises recent installations and performances produced within the context of everyday life, by researchers and artists at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast.
We wish to thank Florian Hollerweger and Matt Green for their insight and help. Parts of this paper, appear in Rebelo, Green and Hollerweger 2008. We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia (www.fctes.mct.pt) towards Rui Chaves’ PhD funding, making this research possible.