Abstract
Keywords: Acoustemology, acoustic ecology, Anthropocene, acoustic territories
This paper considers urban spaces as commercialized topographies of deliberately deployed sonic mnemonics, examining how an acoustemological approach to mapping locale might be reconfigured to address retail environmental music (often referred to as Muzak) as an infrastructural element that bears the capacity to territorialize both their vibratory and non-vibratory sonic spectra – an intentionally articulated sonic architecture that ‘us[es] the words of hits as subliminal advertisements’ (Szendy viii). Finally, it proposes approaches for reconfiguring the unheard strata via FFTbased spectral convolution processes in order to render it audible.
- Michael Trommer is a Toronto-based sound and video artist; his practice has been focused on psychogeographical and acoustemological explorations of anthropocentric space via the use of field recordings, spatial and tactile sound, immersive installation, VR and expanded cinema. He has released, exhibited and performed his work for labels, galleries and festivals throughout the world. In addition to teaching graduate sound design and sound art at George Brown College, Michael also teaches Sound Film at Toronto Metropolitan University, Think Tank at OCAD University as well as Media Practice and Sonic Cinema at York University, where he recently received his PhD in Cinema and Media Arts.