Acoustic Space
Published March 12, 2021
While
collaborating in the journal ‘Explorations’ during the 1950s, Marshall McLuhan and
Edmund Carpenter coined the term Acoustic Space to characterize communication
within the oral tradition. In contrast to spaces configured by literate
communication, in acoustic spaces people receive signals from all directions
all at once: “Auditory space has no favored focus. It’s a sphere without fixed
boundaries, space made by the thing itself, not space containing the thing. It
is not pictorial space, boxed-in, but dynamic, always in flux, creating its own
dimensions moment by moment.” A celebrated prophet of the then upcoming electronic
and digital culture, McLuhan suggested that, since the advent of electrically
configured information, acoustic spaces may come to structure our senses again.
Nevertheless, this electronic flood was not achieved through the abandonment of
linearity nor pictorial spatiality, but through their simultaneous combination
by introducing senses other than vision into play. In the same way that
mechanical images gained movement through acoustic aesthetic resources, electronic
images opened the possibility of the constant reversal between time and space. That
is, transforming a sequential line into an acoustic space
and into a line back again, by introducing the
notoriously a-reflexive sense of touch.
Feautured sounds:
Gimme Love - Joji
Featured spaces: MACBA - CCCB
Related to on TikTok:#macbalife; #skateboarding; #skateyourdunks; @ayyyquepena
Further reading:McLuhan, M., & Carpenter, E. (1957, 2016). Explorations 7: Studies in Culture and Communication. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock.
Featured spaces: MACBA - CCCB
Related to on TikTok:#macbalife; #skateboarding; #skateyourdunks; @ayyyquepena
Further reading:McLuhan, M., & Carpenter, E. (1957, 2016). Explorations 7: Studies in Culture and Communication. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock.