With phonosophy, we are investigating a platform to disembark from the vehicle of the long-travelled logos. The once organic and flowing aspects of Logos (Heraclitus) have all but succumbed to the current scientific, materialistic, mechanistic, quantitative and spatially centric epistemology of the last century – one or all of which perspectives define most of the serious theoretical and critical approaches to organised sound, sound art, music concrète, acousmatic and electroacoustic music in our time. Phonosophy will address that which goes beyond or parallel to the logos, or the logocentric. Adrienne Janus’s discussion of Jean-Luc Nancy’s Listening and the sonic turn looks for conditions of an epistemology based on ‘listening as a mode of attending’ to the resonances of sense, ‘where sense touches upon and resonates with all registers of sensual perception as well as intellectual perception … insofar as they resonate’. Suzanne Guerlac points to Bergson’s theory of real duration (durée réelle) that is the vital energy of animate experience and consciousness as opposed to the entropic energy (thermodynamic) of physics. Together these two overlapping discussions consist of the method (listening/sensing) and field (resonance/duration) of the phonosophic investigation.

Beyond the social and even the human, sound opens onto the intertwining of movements animating the lived experience. A sonic epistemology considers not only that the acoustic ecologies are enunciative of social relations and power dynamics, but also that they tell about the way reality is lived, experienced, organised: they are expressive, in themselves. This means, for an epistemology of phonosophy, that every perception of a sound implies a conceptual movement, which carries a mental dimension that could become the material for another thinking practice, for a sophia. This article approaches music as thinking in itself: a thought of the sonic. This affirmation will be expanded through the contribution of process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze and Guattari, Manning, etc.), which allows a musical event to be considered as an ecology, produced by the encounter of a multiplicity of bodies (human, sonic, technological, etc.). The processes of capture of forces involved and the different techniques required to increase the expressive potentialities of the musical assemblage will be unfolded through the case of Résonances manifestes, a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from autonomous demonstrations.

The experimental music of Chinese musicians including Yan Jun, Li Jianhong, Jun-Y Chao, Shen Piji and the Tea Rockers Quintet embodies a particular mode of thinking rooted in Chinese qi-philosophy known as shanshui (山水)-thought, which considers nature and the environment as secret and nurturing. Shanshui-thought cultivates an existential gesture of following rather than obeying or conquering; it requires tacit resonance rather than object knowing. Shanshui-thought enables us to recognise the cosmic, aesthetic and moral values of music qualities of dan (淡) (quiet and bland) and you (幽) (inward expandedness), once described as ‘poverty’ and ‘darkness’ by the composer Christian Wolff of what he calls ascetic minimalism.

There are a number of electroacoustic (EA) composers who draw on spiritual or religious material for their work. However, for some the word ‘spiritual’ is problematic, being too vague or broad, and the word ‘religious’ too narrow. To refine the word ‘spiritual’ therefore, in a way that might be acceptable also to those who are religious, I employ the contemporary concept of spiritual intelligence (SI) as a proposed framework for linking a discourse of spirituality with electroacoustic music. In addition to postulating SI as a way of framing the word ‘spirituality’, I identify three different ways in which EA composers draw on spiritual or religious material: some use existing sacred texts or methods; some approach sound itself to explore the nature of reality; finally, there are those who are drawn to ancient ways of understanding where spirit and material worlds are not separated; for example, in the West, the Pythagorean tradition.

This article narrates my practice-based research in embodied sonic meditation, as a Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) designer, a vocalist, a composer, a media artist and a long-term meditation practitioner. I define the concept of ‘embodied sonic meditation’ in the context of electroacoustic sound art with the augmentation by music technology and human-centred design. I historically connect embodied sonic meditation to its roots in Tibetan Buddhism and several inspiring music compositional practices in the Western world from the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that physicality and spirituality are unified in an inseparable non-duality form, through sound, body and mind. I develop a methodology for embodied sonic meditation practice, built on fifteen design principles based on previous research in DMI design principles, neuroscience research in meditation, Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, and the criteria of efficiency, music subjectivity, affordance, culture constraints and meaning making. I then make reference to three proof-of-concept case studies that use a sensor-augmented body as an instrument to create sound and sonic awareness. I argue that embodied sonic meditation affords an opportunity for sound art to mediate cultures, improve people’s well-being, and better connect people to their inner peace and the outer world.

Soundscape composition and environmental sound art already imply critiques and negotiations of nature/culture divide and human/non-human difference. This article, along with the composition it frames, thinks through a vision of environmental sound art that completes a link between sonic practice and its object. As a project, it navigates human/animal difference through a sonic knowing which is founded on life’s shared constitution in signs. Sounds beyond spoken words, like the signs that dominate non-human life, are foundationally non-symbolic, and the ability of environmental sound art to resemble and evoke networks of icons and indices is in some respects a privileged position of electroacoustic music. The article presents a non-dualistic sonic thinking within the decentred perspective of the environment, which emerges as a plural product of its engagements and participants. A vision for soundscape composition is presented, along with a frame for its interpretation as sonic thought, or phonosophy.

There are many ways in which wisdom pervades artistic discourse. It is only recently, however, that a concerted effort has been made to understand the wisdom embodied in music. Drawing from the literal translation of phonosophy, this article attempts to unveil what might be described as sonic wisdom from a composer’s perspective, derived from an interview between Australian philosopher Samuel McAuliffe and composer Cat Hope. Hope’s notational practice challenges the hierarchies established by common practice notation, resulting in her contemporary art music being accessible to a wider range of performers, including those that do not read any music notations. Engagement with Hope’s notation leads to a revealing and transfer of a different kind of sonic wisdom than found in more traditionally notated works, in a process facilitated by technologies and articulated through musicianship.

This article assembles and summarises the main ideas presented in the doctoral thesis entitled ‘Voice and Poetry as Inspiration and Material in Acousmatic Music’ by the author and describes his idiosyncratic method for acousmatic composition based on Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro’s aesthetic theory, which is a system that aims at creating artistic works by taking materials from reality and combining them in unexpected ways. The objective of this combination is an equilibrium between rationality and intuition in order to obtain a poem independent of the real world, in the sense of a poetic outcome which avoids traditional mimesis. This creative system, known as Creacionismo, has a central role between various other theoretical, artistic and mainly poetic sources informing the author’s creative process. Huidobro’s creative system has been applied by the author to acousmatic composition procedures generating the notion of acousmatic-creationist as a nomenclature for the process. This particular creative strategy balances rationality and intuition within acousmatic composition and places poetry as a driving force in the use of voice, merging artistic practice and theory in a recursive action.

Since Schaeffer’s development of musique concrète, there has been an ongoing debate regarding the value of the acousmatic reduction for engaging with real-world sound in music, and its relevance for composers and listeners. This article presents a way of working with acousmatic sound that is more meaningful to me as a composer, which I have labelled experiential listening. In understanding acousmatic sound through the lens of experientialism (as opposed to Schaeffer’s use of phenomenology), I have devised this method to form a dialogue between sound, composer, and listener through the use of metaphor, to explore concepts beyond the experience of just sound in itself while composing. It accounts for the felt sense of intuition that can form through working with acousmatic sound, presenting a way of using this as a tool for self-understanding. It highlights Brian Kane’s ontology of acousmatic sound as the being of a gap, exploring where this gap can take the mind of the composer and listener. This is illustrated through my use of experiential listening to gain insights into lived experiences of mental illness and trauma, which reveals inner wisdom about the listening self that can be negotiated through acousmatic sound.

This article makes an argument for the postcritical treatment of the politics of sound art. Counterpointing an autoethnographic analysis of Kristina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks with Seth Kim-Cohen’s critical reading of the same work, I show how a critical position detached from the lived experience leaves behind a wealth of meanings necessary to understand the political potential of sound art. This gap, I argue, necessitates a ‘radical empiricist’ approach shifting the focus from the artistic intent to the lived experiences of the audience and the effects sound art may have on their lives. Drawing on autoethnographic and ethnographic accounts of Kaffe Matthews’s sonic bike rides and Benoît Maubrey Speaker Sculptures, as well as Rita Felski’s project of postcritical reading, I develop a theoretical framework for the politics of sound art based around the concept of affordance. The term ‘affordance’ in this context refers to the possibilities of political meaning or political action an artwork offers to the participants without imposing a particular interpretation on them. I finish by discussing three aspects of political affordances in sound art: meaning-making, uses of sound art and access to participation.

This article looks at the emergence of physical material in a growing number of contemporary sound-based art practices. From academic symposia to music festivals and media art exhibitions, the material presence of physical artefacts is notable in a variety of sound-based disciplines and scenarios. Considering the significance of the visual aspect of these works, this article proposes a reassessment of what audiovisual entails. I argue that our understanding of audiovisual status needs to be expanded beyond the scope of screen-based applications and move into the physical realm of objects and material. Further to this, I outline how the dominant discussions around materiality in sound-based art do not speak sufficiently to the physical materiality manifested in a growing wave within the field. Using an example of my own creative work, I will then suggest audiovisual materialism as an alternative lens through which such practices can be better examined, understood and built upon.