The sonic strategies and technologies of listening alone together inThe World According to Sound’sOutside In: A Communal Listening Series

Abstract

This article examines three dimensions of Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett’s practices for producing, sharing and listening to audio in collective and social ways forThe World According to Sound’sOutside In: the sonic strategies and soundscape design used to engage communal and collective listening, howOutside Inadapts and transforms traditional paradigms using the broadcast medium of the podcast to aesthetically engage with liveness and the corporeality of sound, and how the COVID-19 pandemic afforded space for ‘unpopular’ soundwork based on everyday aural architectures (e.g., field recordings, ambient music, experimental music based on everyday sounds, soundscape collages) that are popular, as in, of the community. Using varied examples drawn fromThe World According to Sound’s soundwork, I illustrate a particular set of sonic strategies to imagine sonic space, listen relationally to sound events, and enact a sociality of collective listening.