Immersive Negotiations: Binaural Perspectives on Site-Specific Sound

Abstract

One of the most compelling aspects of site-specific theatre is the potential for heightened immersion within a specific environment. Increased mobility (on the part of the performance and its audience), combined with the inevitably performative architecture of a hosting site, makes possible a pervasiveness of sensory stimulus unattainable in conventional the atrical contexts. While these condition sappeal to the full range of the senses, some modalities contribute to this experience with significantly more intensity than others.Yet beyond this cross-modal competition, site-specific sound design-particularly that which incorporates the binaural properties of headphone listening — regularly also explores the often contentious interplay between what Paige McGinley, among others, distinguishes as ‘soundscapes’ and ‘soundtracks’.The soundscape- ‘the “acoustic ecology” of a given place or environment’¹ — she suggests ‘is concerned with the local spatial environment, the sounded knowledge of a particular place’ (2007, p.58). By contrast, the soundtrack, as a performative intervention, ‘offer[s] emotional and thematic cues,creating — and documenting — a journey’ (McGinley, 2007, p.58). The soundtrack is understood as a ‘mobile soundscape’, one that’accompany[ies]everyday life, but also perform[s] an aesthetic intervention that shapes one’s daily experiences’ (McGinley, 2007, p.58).