Space and Place in Electroacoustic Music

Sound plays a unique role in the human perception and conception of space and place. This capacity for sound to trigger this crucial dichotomy is carried over to the sonic arts, which are unique in their ability to include space and place in their creative toolkit. This is particularly true of a number of forms of electroacoustic tape musici, most notably acousmatic music (Emmerson & Smalley 2001: 61) and soundscape composition (Truax 2002, 2008). With some exceptions (mostly with regards to soundscape composition), however, this capacity has received relatively little theoretical examination, often remaining a largely intuitive negotiation between composer and listener. This article will examine and contrast some of the thinking around space and place from a number of theoretical perspectives, and their use and elaboration in electroacoustic music, in the hopes that each might perhaps be usefully informative with regards to the other. The creative use of space and place in the sonic arts has been quite fluid – as, indeed, are both our concepts and experiences of space and place, broadly speaking; as a result, rather than prescribe a limited definition of space and place and then examine sonic works through this limited lens, this article will instead consider a number of sometimes contrasting or contradictory perspectives, and some of the shifting ways in which these are enacted in the aesthetic use and experience of sound