The Haptic Sound Field: Spatial aspects of Haptic Aurality in Acoustic and Electroacoustic Diffusion

This article explores the haptic dimension of acoustic fields, considering its influence on the perception and construction of actual and virtual spaces. A ‘haptic aurality’ (introduced in a recent article for Organised Sound (North 2024, Cambridge Press)) is developed, including sometimes contradictory accounts of ‘haptics’ from perceptual sciences, engineering, media studies, and post- structuralism, as found in works by David Parisi, Deleuze and Guattari, Walter Benjamin, and Laura Marks. This framework is applied to the sensorial experience of acoustic fields (free-field, interactive, diffuse-field, resonant spaces), wherein haptic sensations emerge from the relative density of sonic matter acting upon the body, shaped by the balance of sound wave absorption and reflection in (semi)enclosed spaces. Acoustic behaviours might reflect intended functions—indoor spas, Javanese temples, and the neolithic Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a subterranean burial site, are offered as examples of haptic sound fields orienting towards transcendence. By contrast, anechoic chambers provide the haptic ‘shock’ of confronting the repressed corporeal reality in the sound of one’s own heartbeat or blood circulation, and the uncoloured experience of what Barry Truax calls psychoacoustic ‘volume’ or the space inside the sound. The simulation of these actual haptic spaces is addressed, with insight into spatial construction in electroacoustic diffusion techniques and immersive audio. The design and subjective experience of these actual and virtual haptic soundscapes intersects with notions of constructed space in works by Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, bell hooks, and Michel Foucault.
Keywords: Haptics, Acoustics, Soundscape, Environmental Design, Haptic Aurality

Jake Zaslav (Communication Studies, Concordia University, Canada)

I have no Mouth, and I must Breathe: Sensing the Breath of ChatGPT

In the summer of 2024, ChatGPT released its Advanced Voice Mode. While the product was lauded for its rapid response time, emotional expressiveness, and vocal impressions, one feature garnered the most attention: its need to breathe. In this presentation, I will examine how ChatGPT’s insistence on taking audible breaths offers a way for chatbots to interact with users synesthetically. Drawing upon Davina Quinlivan’s concept of Haptic Hearing, I argue that listening to something breathe is an experience that is not just heard but also felt in the flesh and mind. By utilizing breath in its responses, ChatGPT creates a sense of proximity in users that communicates a sense of life, shapes the listener’s breath, and fosters emotional connection with the machine. In engaging the user’s soma – the living body where the physical, mental, and emotional affect each other – ChatGPT encourages users to interact with the chatbot as if it is a human being despite knowing it does not actually feel or think in the same way we do. Through this case study, I highlight how “naturalness” in chatbot interactions can be achieved through not only faster response times and context-aware outputs but also by fostering somatic engagement with the user.

Keywords: Generative AI, Breath, Chatbots, Multi-sensory Design, Sense and Technology Studies 

Zhiqiang Liu √ (Comparative Culture and Language, Arizona State University, USA)

More Than What My Skin Knew: Flowing Affects and Emotions in The Glory

The 2022-2023 Netflix series The Glory emerged as a phenomenon in post-pandemic South Korean television, generating internationally significant acclaim and a highly enthusiastic audience response. The producers have invented a revenge-themed narrative space in order to tackle the task of representing the ingrained institution of school bullying and the unthinkable trauma caused by it. In this essay I analyze the flowing affects and emotions conjoin the two spaces within and beyond the screen from both phenomenological and new phenomenological points of view, and position it in the theoretical framework of haptic sensuality and pathicity respectively formulated by Vivian Sobchack and Tonino Griffero. I focus on the audio-visual design of this TV drama in the creation of haptic and pathic space, in which algesthesia, injustice, hatred and post-revenge relief flow back and forth. Furthermore, I examine the limitations and new possibilities of applying Sobchack's and Griffero's cinematic theoretical frameworks to television studies, especially considering the broader accessibility of television and smartphone screens compared to traditional cinema screens. Through analysis of the representation and invocation of the different bodily senses in the TV series, I argue that, while the cinema screen may offer a more immersive experience, the quotidian presence of television and smartphone screens brings the issue of school bullying into closer proximity with viewers' daily lives, thereby fostering heightened awareness of the phenomenon.
Keywords: affects, emotions, phenomenology, revenge aesthetics, The Glory