Haptic Aurality: Listening in a Digital World

I will question modes of listening in network music performance environments, drawing on my experience as a performer listening in these scenarios. I will situate network listening, which I have previously examined as ‘haptic aurality’ (Schroeder, 2009, 2012, 2013) within the context of current music making, and will refer to changes in compositional practices that draw specific attention to listening. I will show that some of these compositional developments play a determining role in articulating a new discourse of listening. French composer Eric Satie’s concept of Furniture Music (in Duckworth, 2005), Pierre Schaeffer’s ideas on reduced listening (1966), Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening practices (2005) as well as digital music platforms all serve to show a development towards a proliferation in listening experiences. I expand this narrative to listening practices in network performance environments, and identify a specific bodily fragility in listening in and to the network. This fragile state of listening and de-centered kind of performative being allow me to draw parallels to the Japanese art form Butoh (Kasai, 1999, 2000; Kasai and Parsons, 2003) and Elaine Scarry’s metaphor of beauty (Scarry, 2001). My own performance experiences, set within the context of several critical texts, allow me to understand network[ed] listening as an ideal corporeal state, which offers a rethinking of linear conceptions of the other and a subject’s own relation with her world. Ultimately, network[ed] listening posits listening as a corporeal and multi-dimensional experience that is continuously being re-shaped by technological, socio-political and cultural concerns.