Exposition

The Secret Theatre Revisited: Eavesdropping on Locative Media Performances (2017)

Pieter Verstraete
open exposition

About this exposition

With the proliferation of the iPod and related audio mobile technologies in our daily experiences, Shuhei Hosokawa’s “The Walkman Effect” (1984) gains new significance. While exploring the locative aspects of these technologies for media art, I elaborate on Hosokawa’s idea of a “secret theatre” by paralleling it to some compelling concepts in audio (culture) studies, such as Michael Bull’s “auditized looking,” Elisabeth Weis’ “écouterism,” Denis Hollier/Jean Paul Sartre’s “auditory gaze,” and Steven Connor’s “modern auditory I.” As case studies, I focus on three performative audio walks that all took place in train stations around 2012-2013: Janet Cardiff’s Alter Bahnhof, Dries Verhoeven’s Niemandsland, and Judith Hoffland’s Like Me. Each in their own right reconfigures the urban experience by means of locative features and interactive relations with their environments. These art works help to see Hosokawa’s “secret theatre” in a new light of highly individualized yet relational aesthetic experiences that open our ears and eyes to an outside social context and reality rather than shut them off.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsJournal of sonic studies, sound, spatial turn, Urban cultures, technology, Sonic Studies
date06/12/2017
published14/12/2017
last modified14/12/2017
statuspublished
share statusprivate
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/411830/411831
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue15. Issue 15


Simple Media

id name copyright license
411833 sonicstudies-banner-964-3 JSS All rights reserved
411853 VideoObject 1-Alter Bahnhof Cardiff / Kassel All rights reserved
411856 VideoObject 2-Niemandsland Verhoeven All rights reserved
411870 VideoObject 3-Like Me Hofland All rights reserved

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