A Word from the Subject Editor

Abstract

Auditory culture and auditory narratives increasingly emerge as an inter- and transdisciplinary field of inquiry within the humanities, social sciences, medical sciences, and technological studies. A significant dimension of these analyses concerns the components of auditory culture, as well as the methods and tools employed in its examination. Scholarly attention is directed toward both analog and digital auditory culture from historical, archaeological, and comparative perspectives, alongside medical, social, psychological, neurocognitive, technological, and media-related determinants of hearing and listening, and their impact on contemporary media culture and cyberculture.

The audiosphere is gaining prominence in research within the psychology of hearing, (neuro)aesthetics, cultural studies, and contemporary communication studies. Analytical focus extends to the role of media and digital technologies in “matrixing” patterns, strategies, and rituals of creating and receiving auditory messages in both online and offline environments, as well as to genres and formats of auditory communication, including their aesthetic, ideological, economic, and technocultural dimensions.

Scholars also reflect upon auditory media and messages within the contexts of remix culture and participatory culture; auditory memory, sensitivity, and imagination; and strategies for developing auditory competencies in contemporary media culture, encompassing both traditional and post-traditional education.

Further inspiring research areas include strategies of evoking mental imagery through auditory narratives (from user- and audience-oriented research perspectives), the phenomenology of auditory perception, and contemporary (neuro)aesthetics in relation to auditory culture and its products.

Dedicated studies examine urban, local, and social acoustic landscapes within the frameworks of human geography, sociology, the anthropology of sound, and sensory anthropology, as well as human soundscapes shaped by cultural, geographical, and social determinants. Within this context, research addresses auditory narratives as modes of understanding and experiencing the world (narratological, phenomenological, neurocognitive, and neuroaesthetic approaches), in addition to analyses of the role and typologies of sound in both natural environments and artistic creations.

There has also been a steady increase in publications devoted to cultural and media studies analyses of radio dramas, audiobooks, and audio series. Research encompasses both reception and production processes, as well as the institutional, psychological, and cultural dimensions accompanying them. Significant aspects of these studies include podcasting (in its cultural, sociological, and economic contexts), the expanding sphere of audio pornography in relation to sensory and affective reception, and research grounded in theories of the embodied mind.

Specialized analyses further address noise, silence, and pause as aesthetic devices in media narratives; the semantics of silence and interstitial sound spaces in radio genres and auditory performances; and the relationship between types of auditory spaces and the construction of media narratives.

Studies of auditory media are also conducted within the framework of cultural, individual, and autobiographical memory research, as well as in relation to user needs and motivations, theories of affordances, and user experience research.

The authors of the scholarly articles gathered in this thematic issue engage with the aforementioned problems and perspectives. We warmly invite you to explore the contributions presented in this volume.

/Agnieszka Ogonowska/