Exposition

AFFECTIVE LISTENING: China’s Experimental Music and Sound Art Practice (2018)

Adel Wang Jing
open exposition

About this exposition

When we listen affectively, we listen with and to our bodies. The ear-becoming-body. When a sound does not carry any identifiable, decodable, or communicative message, it affects the listening body in the way touching does. Sound touches the listening body, causing concretely felt intensities before the mind knows. Affective listening is a commitment to forces, intensities and becoming. One listens to the Qi or “haecceities” of sound, which are only later reduced and signified as harmony, melody, or emotions (Cox 2011; Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Massumi 2002). Affective listening resembles Buddhist meditation in that both emphasize the practice of Qi (of body-mind-soul) rather than the mind alone, and both lead to self-transforming rather than self-transcending. In the context of Chinese experimental music and sound art practice, affective listening functions as the cultivation of the self, aspiring to the state of selflessness. This paper presents the initial stage of a larger project to formulate the model of “affective listening” as a mode afforded by China’s free improvisation and experimental music practices.
typeresearch exposition
date24/11/2015
published27/06/2018
last modified27/06/2018
statuspublished
share statusprivate
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/229681/229682
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue02. Issue 2


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id name copyright license
229759 Yan Jun 颜峻 at M adel wang jin All rights reserved
229757 Mind Fiber (Li Jianhong & VAVABOND) live@Baochu Mountain.rmvb adel wang jin All rights reserved
229734 Figure 4 Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229727 Figure 3 Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229715 Figure 2 Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229710 WANG AudioObject 2 Talks at The Pigsty Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229705 Figure 1 Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229702 WANG AudioObject 1 Uhm, I m watching the rain Adel Wang Jing All rights reserved
229684 JSS Banner research catalogue All rights reserved

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