Fifty-one aural selfies (fixed media soundscape compositions)

The research statement that accompanies the soundscape project ‘Fifty-one aural selfies’ proceeds from a premise that listening may be understood and practiced as an embodied, embedded process of hearing-feeling connection with all that surrounds. While the term 'immersive audio' is often used to refer to spatialised sound media that affords a listener's sense of envelopment within vast spaces, I am interested in developing approaches to capturing and sharing a more mundane, proximate field of sonic experience, in order that spatial listening and immersive audio may be considered and felt from a different perspective. Using held or worn recording devices, utilising binaural and ambisonic recording formats, and employing compositional strategies of layering, filtering and audio transformation to render recordings more vivid, I use ubiquitous sounds of my everyday sonic encounters and close-at-hand interactions as a basis for sonic reimaginings of everyday listening. This combined practice of field recording and soundscape composition is presented here as one way to explore immersive audio practice as a creative domain for capturing and eliciting sensory immediacy, intimacy and self-reflection.