Listening for Context: Interpretation, abstraction and the real

What is it about?

Notions of “abstraction” and “the real” are fundamental problems at the heart of studies on recorded sound. This paper seeks to unpack established notions of abstraction and "reality" through the lens of audience perception and interpretation. Challenging perspectives which treat the work as a discrete artefact offered up for reception by a passive audience. Logically extrapolating the consequences to demonstrate that any absolute distinction between abstraction and the real is, in fact, false. This subsequently offers up novel perspectives for approaching creative practice with recorded sound and our understanding of how sonic contexts are constructed.

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Why is it important?

This paper was developed in response to a call proposing that works made using recognisable recorded soundscapes might be described as "context-based". It therefore directly investigates this question, unpacking the terminology and seeking to discover what such a term actually means. And what impact its use might have upon our understanding of this musical practice.