Fluid Sounds

Explorations and analysis of soundscapes have, since Canadian R. Murray Schafer's work during the early 1970's, developed into various established research - and artistic disciplines. The interest in sonic environments is today present within a broad range of contemporary art projects and in architectural design. Aesthetics, psychoacoustics, perception, and cognition are all present in this expanding field embracing such categories as soundscape composition, sound art, sonic art, sound design, sound studies and auditory culture. Of greatest significance to the overall field is the investigation of sound, site and the social, and how the spatial, the visual, and the bodily interact in sonic environments, how they are constructed and how they are entangled in other practices.

With the Seismograf special issue Fluid Sounds, we bring this knowledge into the dissemination of audio research itself by introducing a new format: The Audio Paper. The purpose of the audio paper is to extend the written academic text: to present discussions and explorations of a certain argument or problem in sound. The audio paper is an extension of expressive means: Not only words and syntax are means of expression – so are tempo, time, voice, sound and music. Our goal is to bring analytical and performative awareness to academic means of expression, and the audio paper provides us with a new and experimental platform to do so. Our thoughts about and definition of the audio paper is explained in the first text of the issue: Audio Papers – a manifesto.