Acousmatic Spaces, Lived Places: Holophony and the Embodied Experience of Shared Atmospheres

Abstract Soundscape studies traditionally focus on nature and environmental sounds, often privileging natural environments and rural “hi-fi” soundscapes. The way and place of listening are integral to the experience of these recordings. This article shifts the emphasis from recording to reception by investigating how acousmatic re-creation of sound interacts with architecture to create, transform, or disrupt a sense of place. Framed through phenomenological approaches to space and place, this article examines various spatial audio techniques to understand how atmosphere is shaped within the acousmatic space. Listener-centered spherical spatial audio approaches such as ambisonics and Dolby Atmos are inherently personalized. These spatialization techniques assume that everyone within a space is fixed at the ideal listening position, or the “sweet spot.” On the other hand, holophonic techniques offer an alternative that reconstructs the wavefront itself. Using holophonic techniques, the acousmatic reproduction creates a communalized mode of listening, where spatial relationships and atmospheric qualities remain consistent across the space. For truly immersive collective experiences, spatial reproduction must be communalized and designed so that spatial relationships and atmospheric qualities are preserved across the listening area and the synthesized space behind the speaker, working as part of the space rather than as a separate entity.