Where Is Sound? Where Am I?
Mark Grimshaw, Tom Alexander Garner · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2015
This chapter answers one of the questions posed in the previous chapter—where is sound?—by stating that its location is, in an embodied sense, in the mind, and the chapter uses this concept to explain our sense of locatedness in space. Various philosophical positions, including distal, medial, proximal, and aspatial theories of the location of sound are perused, as is empirical evidence from audiology regarding sound localization. The related concepts of acousmatization, synchresis, and the ventriloquism effect are debated alongside sound’s role in social formation, particularly as expressed in the field of acoustic ecology. Finally, issues of presence and immersion are discussed in relationship to sound. The conclusion is that sound is in the mind, but that we actively place or locate sound in the environment through a process of cognitive offloading, and this is one of the means in which we locate our selves.