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Psychoacoustics offers a promising, subject-centred approach in unlocking the sonic experience of past built spaces. Its tools and metrics offer tempting responses to an essential challenge of sensory archaeology practice: the rendition of individual experience as data. How can one person’s experiences be compared with another’s towards generalized observations? Moreover, what can be said about past experience as a result? These questions are central to the ongoing acoustic consideration of the ancient sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lykaion. Here the landscape that binds the sanctuary ruins offers noteworthy moments of sonic connectivity and isolation. Building on existing scholarship based on researcher perception, a sensory approach was developed to explore the site’s sonic relationships and ultimately determine what roles they could have played in original site usage, information beyond what the architecture and written record offers. Extensive site research uses first-hand sonic observation to frame a machine-based psychoacoustic analysis of binaural field recordings. Findings map out a sacred terrain of shared and singular experience orchestrated by sonic connectivity made available for further interpretation. They also underscore the necessity of caution in interpreting psychoacoustic findings themselves as an empathetic understanding of past people.
Psychoacoustics offers a promising, subject-centred approach in unlocking the sonic experience of past built spaces. Its tools and metrics offer tempting responses to an essential challenge of sensory archaeology practice: the rendition of individual experience as data. How can one person’s experiences be compared with another’s towards generalized observations? Moreover, what can be said about past experience as a result? These questions are central to the ongoing acoustic consideration of the ancient sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lykaion. Here the landscape that binds the sanctuary ruins offers noteworthy moments of sonic connectivity and isolation. Building on existing scholarship based on researcher perception, a sensory approach was developed to explore the site’s sonic relationships and ultimately determine what roles they could have played in original site usage, information beyond what the architecture and written record offers. Extensive site research uses first-hand sonic observation to frame a machine-based psychoacoustic analysis of binaural field recordings. Findings map out a sacred terrain of shared and singular experience orchestrated by sonic connectivity made available for further interpretation. They also underscore the necessity of caution in interpreting psychoacoustic findings themselves as an empathetic understanding of past people.
The aim of this work is to analyse recent studies which have raised new hypotheses concerning aural architecture as an emerging trend in humanities research, with a particular focus on the intersection of sacred space, rituals, and sound in the past. These studies have highlighted how sacred buildings not only defined a sacred place as a physical and symbolic expression of a specific form of worship but also established the setting for performative and multisensorial ceremonies in which music, dance, and other sonic events played an important role. In this contribution, we investigate studies on aural architecture to explore if the location of sacred spaces indicates whether ancient people reacted to ritual and musical developments by modifying sanctuaries or by designing and constructing new buildings and spaces for performances. In addition, this article explores studies on aural architecture to obtain an overview of how specific sonic features could have influenced the soundscape of sacred spaces, which consisted not only of songs, music, prayers, recitations and religious sonic and vocal utterances but also of natural elements, such as animals, water, and wind. This overview also takes into consideration how digital technologies and virtual acoustics can help shape our understanding of the architecture-sound nexus.
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