Listening to The Heart: Exploring Atmospheres through Experiments with Affective Capture and Sound
Tony Hong Liu · Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2019
Given this experimental research design informed by non-representational methodologies, I aim to answer two questions. What do experiments with affective capture through atmospheres of listening reveal about academic discussions on affect, emotion, and affective atmospheres? Moreover, what are the benefits of engaging in the discursive deconstruction of feeling and atmosphere if a disentangling is impossible? To summarize, I reaffirm the understanding of atmosphere as one which blurs the boundary between emotion and affect because of experiential subtleties and an affective excess that sometimes manifests from atmosphere (Anderson, 2009, p. 80). As for affect, I emphasize its precognitive and transpersonal qualities. Regarding discursive analysis of atmosphere, I argue that the process can help attune to affective life by revealing spatial-temporal extensions of subjectivity, and in the process, provide opportunities to explore difference informing the non-representational call to enliven the world. The following is a breakdown of this project. Chapter 1 is a literature review of geographic engagements with sound, affect and emotion, as well as affective atmospheres. Chapter 2 details the creation of methodologies for listening and experiments with affective capture. Chapter 3 details methods for audio performance creation and affective analysis including creative performance pieces and arguments on subjectivity. Finally, in the conclusion, I emphasize remarks answering the two questions posed earlier while positing further research possibilities with listening.