Geometries in sound: an investigation of embodied cognition in contemporary art music

Abstract

This paper examines how listeners hear contemporary art music practices such as post-spectralism, glitch-electronica, contemporary classical and electroacoustic music. The sound configurations of this music evoke sensorial qualities and mental imagery as abstract geometries. These result from tonotopic information of acoustic stimuli organised according to Gestalt and kinaesthetic patterns. The study, employing listening surveys, suggests that our aural experience involves an embodied connection to the world. This paper proposes that contemporary art music facilitates an engagement with our experiential knowledge, minimising semantic interpretation and factual listening. Overall, it offers new insights into perceptual approaches to contemporary art music.

KEYWORDS:

• contemporary art music
• auditory gestalt
• embodied cognition
• sound aesthetics
• cognitive psychology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term ‘contemporary art music’ to refer to a large set of contemporary genres and aesthetics, both institutional and underground, that are generally included within current experimental music practices. This is a somewhat neutral term that takes the place of other common terms such as ‘new music’, ‘contemporary and experimental music’ or ‘avant-garde music’ (Grebosz-Haring & Weichbold, 2020).

2 Certain seminal works on music perception lack of exploration into experimental musical genres and techniques (Huron, 2006, p. 351), some of these studies fail to address the theories proposed regarding such practices, leading to discussions on the potential ‘sabotage’ of established perceptual and cognitive frameworks (Snyder, 2001) or raising doubts regarding the validity and legitimacy of these unconventional musical expressions (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983, p. 297).

3 Nowadays, within the broad context of audiovisual arts, it has become increasingly common to come across to sound installations, multisensory environments, virtual and augmented listening experiences. Artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, Char Davies, Marko Ciciliani, Beatriz Ferreyra, and Michael Beil are notable examples, known for their unconventional performances, they often incorporate unpitched and noisy sounds within nonlinear temporal progressions (Cox & Warner, 2017).

4 In particular, the acoustic phenomenon of binaural beats is an acoustic illusion which relies on the principle of phase difference; a principle also fundamental to binaural hearing that allows us to locate sound ‘out there’. Precisely because of this common ground, binaural beats challenge our capacity to recognise a sound’s position in the outer world and can generate the sensation that sounds contributing to this interference pattern are located somewhere in the head.

5 I discussed (Wanke, 2021, pp. 83–84) the impact of listening in complete darkness, a strategy that may allow the listener to focus on the intrinsic properties of sound (Eitan et al., 2012; Ross, 2010), the use of sound manipulation in order to mask source recognition, and the importance of being completely aware of the actual modes of sound production in order to not be distracted by our innate tendency to search for a sound origin.

6 For a detailed distinction between ‘auditory-’, ‘sonic-’, and ‘sound-object’ please refer to (Hjortkjær, 2016) and (Rocchesso & Fontana, 2003).

7 We associate this specific perceptual stance with a vertical temporality in perception (Bergson 1922/1998) which –with respect to music– naturally applies to spectralist and minimalist perspectives.

8 In other musical cultures this frequency dimension is described as an axis of ‘sharpness/heaviness’ or ‘small/large’ (Eitan & Granot, 2006; Zbikowski, 2008, 2017; Cox, 2016).

9 For details on the origin of morphodynamical theory see (Thom, 1983; Petitot, 1985, 2011).

10 Post-spectral pieces commonly include a compositional technique that goes beyond sound spectrum analysis and reunites timbral and harmonic elements with other elements of music (Dunbar, 2011, p. 295).

11 As I previously discussed (Wanke, 2021), distorted and noisy sounds easily evoke a sense of saturation, as if the sound material is actually filling a container, and as convincingly expressed by a participant to this audio extract: ‘ … something going through a tunnel’ (see Appendix).

12 Proprioception is ‘a form of internal perception required to keep the brain informed about the body’s current posture, limb configuration, and state of movement’ (DeLanda, 2022, p. 48).

13 For instance, the presence of a task asking to focus on how sounds are able to evoke figures in motion may lead participants to associate musical excerpts with figures representing body movements instead of disembodied figures.