Abram, D. (2017). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1997).
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 03/09/2026, 02:40
Following Merleau-Ponty, Abram acknowledges the primacy of the body in fashioning a self by engaging with other selves and with space. Yes, perhaps there is something genetically dictated in our behaviours but, like the spider spinning a web, these genetic 'programs' must also interact with the present through its bodily sensing of the terrain, and its specific features and dimensions, in which the web must be spun. "[T]he genome could not explicitly have commanded the order of every flexion and extension of her various limbs as she weaves this web into its place. However complex are the inherited "programs," patterns, or predispositions, they must still be adapted to the immediate situation in which the spider finds itself. However determinate one's genetic inheritance, it must still, as it were, be woven into the present, an activity that necessarily involves both a receptivity to the specific shapes and textures of that present and a spontaneous creativity in adjusting oneself (and one's inheritance) to those contours. It is this open activity, this dynamic blend of receptivity and creativity by which every animate organism necessarily orients itself to the world (and orients the world around itself), that we speak of by the term "perception"."
Discussing the participatory nature of perception through the analogy of a magician using sleight of hand on a coin: "he uses his sleights to enhance the animation of the object, generating ambiguous gaps and lacunae in the visible trajectory of the coin. The spectators' eyes, already drawn by the coin's fluid dance across the magician's fingers, spontaneously fill in those gaps with impossible events, and it is this spontaneous involvement of the spectators' own senses that enables the coin to vanish and reappear, or to pass through the magician's hand [...] The perceiving body does not calculate logical possibilities; it gregariously participates in the activity of the world, lending its imagination to things in order to see them more fully."
Berressem, H. (2005). n-1 sexes. Rhizomes, 11(12). Retrieved July 7, 2006, from http://www.rhizomes.net ... 11/berressem/index.html
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 07/07/2006, 10:46
"the power of an ecosystem lies in its affectability and in its power to affect, in its elasticity|plasticity and in its openness to minor, molecular influences..."
Chagas, P. C. (2005). Polyphony and embodiment: A critical approach to the theory of autopoiesis. Revista Transcultural de Música, 9 Retrieved July 7, 2006, from http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans9/chagas.htm
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 07/07/2006, 11:11
"Reverberation becomes an instrument of the deconstruction and re-construction of space"
Dean, R. T., & Bailes, F. (2007). 'Human understanding' in imagining and organising sound: Some implications of John Locke's essay for ecological, cognitive and embodied approaches to composition. Organized Sound, 12(1), 89–95.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 25/12/2014, 10:01
Gibson, J. J. (2015). An ecological approach to visual perception. New York and London: Psychology Press. (Original work published 1979).
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 02/11/2018, 11:03
Grimshaw, M. (2010). Relaciones mediadas por el sonido entre jugadores en el entorno de juegos multijugador. Comunicar, 34, 73–81.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 19/04/2010, 08:43
Morabito, R., Ortenzi, F., Pelicella, I., & Morozzo della Rocca, B. 2026. The lens of the sonic holobiont: A perspective on acoustic influence on microbial communities and its application as an additional layer to the holobiont concept. [Preprint]
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 22/03/2026, 22:23
"we coined the term “sonic holobiont” to refer to the entirety of species in the same acoustic niche that they interact and evolve with. In other words, the sonic holobiont can be seen as a framework that considers the entirety of sonic interrelationships occurring in a given acoustic niche, not just from a human perspective (which characterizes the definition of soundscape)."
Southworth, M. (1969). The sonic environment of cities. Environment and Behavior, 1(1), 49–70.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 01/01/2020, 15:55
Tompkins, E. L., & Adger, W. N. (2004). Does adaptive management of natural resources enhance resilience to climate change? Ecology and Society, 9(2). Retrieved July 6, 2006, from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art10/
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 06/07/2006, 22:24
Wattles, J. (2024). Why sonic booms from the most powerful rocket ever built have some scientists worried. Retrieved December 26, 2024, from https://edition.cnn.com ... p-sonic-boom/index.html
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 26/12/2024, 15:17
Westerkamp, H. (2000). Editorial. Soundscape, 1(1), 3–4.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 17/11/2006, 10:17
The acoustic ecology concerns "the relationship between soundscape and listener"
"We are not outside the ecology ... we are always and inevitably a part of it" (quoting Gregory Bateson).
Wilhelmsson, U. (2001). Enacting the point of being: Computer games, interaction and film theory. Unpublished thesis PhD, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 19/06/2008, 10:46
"The game player is the manipulator of the environment."
"By this I mean that when we hear a sound we render a visual representation of that sound. If any sound will produce a visual response then it is very obvious why language is so full of visual metaphor."
"Sounds also have affordances. They reveal something about the objects producing the sound. To exemplify, we might perceive sounds as ”dense” or ”light” suggesting that there are qualities that constrains or permits locomotion. A ”dense” sound might be conceptualized and understood as ”a wall of sound”. We can not walk through walls if they do not have openings, and openings afford locomotion as Gibson shows. What I mean is that a sound that we understand as ”dense” does not afford locomotion in the same way as a ”light” sound. When creating sound-scapes either as stand-alones or to merge with images, this is important to notice. One might create a ”big” and ”massive” sound that have some ”openings” in it. It also the case that a ”dense” sound might be so powerful that it is unpleasant to get any closer to it. That is to say, it does not afford locomotion in the direction of the sound source."
"Visualization is a human internal act of cognition. Sounds are shapes in the environment of man and other animals."
"I do believe that we do make us an image of how someone looks through such things as the vocal timbre for instance."
