Listening – the Cinderella profile component of English

This article investigates the role of listening in English. The importance of ‘reading with the ear’ is discussed, as is research into the views of teachers and pupils on this topic. Practical suggestions are made for according to listening a more meaningful place in English. Originally English was conceived as listening and reading, talking and writing. It would enrich the conception of English as a subject to uncouple listening from talking and instead give it its place as a profile component in its own right.

Network[ed] Listening – towards a de-centering of beings

In this paper, I question modes of listening in network music performance environments, and specifically draw on my experience as a performer listening in these scenarios. I situate network listening within the context of current music making, and refer to changes in compositional practices that draw specific attention to listening. I argue that some of these compositional developments play a determining role in articulating a new discourse of listening. Eric Satie's concept of Furniture Music, Schaeffer's ideas on reduced listening, Oliveros' deep listening practices 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 and Elaine Scarry's metaphor of beauty. My own performance experiences, set within the context of several critical texts, allow me to see 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.

Evocative Listening : Mediated Practices in Everyday Life

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.

Acoustic Interculturalism: Listening to Performance

Acoustic Interculturalism is a study of the soundscapes of intercultural performance through the examination of sound's performativity. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the book examines an akoumenological reception of sound to postulate the need for an acoustic knowing – an awareness of how sound shapes the intercultural experience.