Silence, Sounds, Music

This book examines the intersections of silence with immersive arts and experiences. Silence and immersion may seem antithetical: while immersion is supposedly induced by acoustic and other stimuli, silence is commonly understood as the absence or opposite of sound. Since the Eighteenth Century, however, silence has been established as a multifarious and polyvalent cultural concept. Immersion, in turn, though often used as a simple ‘all-inclusive’ term, has old and complex ontological and epistemological roots.

Organised into three parts, this book brings critical, historical, and theoretical debates on silence into dialogue with different notions of immersion. The 16 theoretical articles and case studies engage in discovering and questioning the continued prominence of both concepts in aesthetics, culture, and media. Covering music, film, digital, visual and performance art, theater, video games, and theme parks, the chapters discuss both highly canonical and rarely examined artifacts. Written by scholars from Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland, the interdisciplinary collection includes perspectives from musicology, film studies, cultural and media studies, gender studies, art history, and philosophy.

Silence, Sounds, Music addresses both an academic and wider audience. It will be of interest to anyone interested in music, sound, immersive experiences, the so-called experience economy, and contemporary art and culture.