Sound Art as Locative Narrative

Locative narrative is a form of mobile sound art, often heard on headphones, that sites stories in city streets, inside public buildings, in gardens and remote cliff tops. The primacy of the particular listening location differentiates locative narrative from other works, such as, soundscapes or radio drama, created for the concert hall, gallery or broadcast to undetermined settings. This chapter positions sound art as a narrative practice and enquires into the relations of sounds and things within an experiential pragmatist framing. It puts forward the metaphor of multi-stability that characterises the types of affects experienced from partaking in locative narrative and discusses strategies for how they can be evoked