Immanence and Immersion : On the Acoustic Condition in Contemporary Art

Immersion is the new orthodoxy. Within the production, curation and critique of sound art, as well as within the broader fields of sound studies and auditory culture, the immersive is routinely celebrated as an experiential quality of sound, the value of which is inherent yet strengthened through dubious metaphysical oppositions to the visual. Yet even within the visual arts an acoustic condition grounded in Marshall McLuhan's metaphorical notion of acoustic space underwrites predispositions towards immersion. This broad conception of an acoustic condition in contemporary art identifies the envelopment of audiences and spectators who no longer perceive from a distance but immanently experience immersive artworks and environments. Immanence and Immersion takes a critical approach to the figures of immersion and interiority describing an acoustic condition in contemporary art. It is argued that a price paid for this predisposition towards immersion is often the conceptual potency and efficacy of the work undertaken, resulting in arguments that compound the marginalisation and disempowerment of practices and discourses concerned with the sonic. The variously phenomenological, correlational and mystical positions that support the predominance of the immersive are subject to critique before suggesting that a stronger distinction between the often confused concepts of immersion and the immanence might serve as a means of breaking with the figure of immersion and the circle of interiority towards attaining greater conceptual potency and epistemological efficacy within the sonic arts. Immersion is the new orthodoxy. Within the production, curation and critique of sound art, as well as within the broader fields of sound studies and auditory culture, the immersive is routinely celebrated as an experiential quality of sound, the value of which is inherent yet strengthened through dubious metaphysical oppositions to the visual. Yet even within the visual arts an acoustic condition grounded in Marshall McLuhan's metaphorical notion of acoustic space underwrites predispositions towards immersion. This broad conception of an acoustic condition in contemporary art identifies the envelopment of audiences and spectators who no longer perceive from a distance but immanently experience immersive artworks and environments. Immanence and Immersion takes a critical approach to the figures of immersion and interiority describing an acoustic condition in contemporary art. It is argued that a price paid for this predisposition towards immersion is often the conceptual potency and efficacy of the work undertaken, resulting in arguments that compound the marginalisation and disempowerment of practices and discourses concerned with the sonic. 0The variously phenomenological, correlational and mystical positions that support the predominance of the immersive are subject to critique before suggesting that a stronger distinction between the often confused concepts of immersion and the immanence might serve as a means of breaking with the figure of immersion and the circle of interiority towards attaining greater conceptual potency and epistemological efficacy within the sonic arts Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 List of Tables 9 Preface 10 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 12 I.1 Immersion is the new orthodoxy 13 I.2 The ideology of immersion 17 I.3 Immersion and correlationism 24 I.4 Immanence and immersion 27 I.5 Exteriority and the outside 31 I.6 Exiting immersion 40 Chapter 1 Decentralization 46 1.1 Get Out of the Defensive Position 50 1.2 Transcendental empiricism: Approaching the edge of the circle 54 1.3 Negative duration 58 1.4 Prodigious simplification 63 Chapter 2 Infraesthetics 68 2.1 Extreme audition 68 2.2 Rolf Julius 77 2.3 Stephen Vitiello 79 2.4 Nina Canell 81 Chapter 3 Writing Out Sound 88 3.1 Writing and exteriority 90 3.2 Exteriority and the real 91 3.3 Sound recording and writing sound 93 3.4 Sound is always-already written out 96 Chapter 4 Immersive Phenomenology 100 4.1 Husserl 102 4.2 Merleau-Ponty 110 Chapter 5 Sonic Materialism 120 5.1 Affective matter 124 5.2 Material phenomenology 127 5.3 Sonic-material phenomenology 130 5.4 Sonic realism 133 Chapter 6 The Scientific Image 146 6.1 Ryoichi Kurokawa: Abstraction and the lifeworld 154 6.2 Towards a corruption of aesthetic sufficiency 163 Chapter 7 Repurposing Conceptualism 166 7.1 Immanence and representation 175 7.2 Extinction abounds: Katie Paterson 178 Chapter 8 The Stratification of Immanence 186 8.1 Immanence contra immersion 186 8.2 Beyond the circle 195 8.3 Immanence and an ethics of exteriority 202 References 206 Index 211 Machine generated contents note: -- 1. Introduction 1.1. Acoustic space -- 1.2. The audiovisual litany -- 1.3. Immersion is the new orthodoxy -- 1.4. The confusion of immanence and immersion 2. Immersive Phenomenology 2.1. The lived and the embodied: phenomenological conditions of the immersive -- 2.2. Husserl: phenomenological (sound) objects -- 2.3. Merleau-Ponty: immersion and embodiment -- 2.4. Henry: phenomenology and affective immanence 3. Immanent Thought 3.1. Kant: the immanence of critique -- 3.2. Hegel: absolute immanence -- 3.3. Deleuze: transcendental empiricism and the space of immanence -- 3.4. Badiou: immanence and the infinite 4. Writing out Sound 4.1. Recording technology, writing and exteriority -- 4.2. Realising Derrida -- 4.3. Badiou: the dis-qualification of writing -- 4.4. Digitisation and Infinite Exchange 5. Sound, Concept and Idea 6. Conclusion: Immanence contra Immersion -- 7. Bibliography -- Index "A critique of immersive aesthetics in the arts, with particular emphasis placed upon sound and new media art"-- Provided by publisher