Papers by Michael Trommer
International Journal of Cartography, 2024
This paper discusses the Petra Anamnetic acoustic mapping project. Juxtaposing audio recordings m... more This paper discusses the Petra Anamnetic acoustic mapping project. Juxtaposing audio recordings made in the World Heritage Site of Petra and the neighbouring tourist town of Wadi Musa, Jordan, the piece interrogates how sound might provide insights into the complex frictions existing between the native Bedouins and the foreign travelers they have become dependent upon for their economic survival.
This paper considers urban spaces as commercialized topographies of deliberately deployed sonic m... more This paper considers urban spaces as commercialized topographies of deliberately deployed sonic mnemonics, examining how an acoustemological approach to mapping locale might be reconfigured to address retail environmental music (often referred to as Muzak) as an infrastructural element that bears the capacity to territorialize both their vibratory and non-vibratory sonic spectra-an intentionally articulated sonic architecture that 'us[es] the words of hits as subliminal advertisements' (Szendy viii). Finally, it proposes approaches for reconfiguring the unheard strata via FFT-based spectral convolution processes in order to render it audible.
Journal of New Music Research, Dec 20, 2019
This paper discusses Points Further North, a VR documentary that applies an expanded acoustemolog... more This paper discusses Points Further North, a VR documentary that applies an expanded acoustemological framework to the acquisition and dissemination of audio-visual content in order to investigate a non-place that is characteristic of the Anthropocene. The project exploits the possibilities inherent in the amplification of the vibratory and electromagnetic spectra that permeate our urban environments: infrasonic/tactile elements are disseminated via wearable haptic interfaces and the electrical emissions of our technotope are sonified via the via use of electromagnetic transducers. In addition, the project explores the possibility of integrating mnemonic sound propagation as a relevant, affective component of a contingent soundscape.
Abstracts of the ICA
This paper discusses the Points Further North project, a VR documentary that was undertaken with ... more This paper discusses the Points Further North project, a VR documentary that was undertaken with a view to foregrounding how sound can be deployed as the primary mechanism for laying out the complex, often subjugated relationships manifested between physical spaces and those who inhabit them. Specifically, It examines how ambisonic and haptic audio's profoundly affective emotional, tactile and topologically enveloping capacities can be articulated within an acoustemological framework (acoustemology is best defined by ethnographer Steven Feld as "sonic ways of being in and knowing the world") in order to evoke a heightened sense of awareness, perhaps even an agency, with respect to the largely abstracted ramifications arising from the consumerist lifestyles that are endemic to the developed world. The project exploits the possibilities inherent in the amplification of the vibratory and electromagnetic spectra that permeate our urban environments: infrasonic/tactile elements are disseminated via the Subpac wearable haptic interface in order to constitute a corporeal and emotional presence, and the radiant (yet invisible) transmissions of our information, economic and surveillance networks are captured and sonified via the via use of electromagnetic transducers. Both sonically and thematically, Points Further North seeks to uncover that which sound studies scholar Salomé Voegelin, terms "our locality on the invisible index of sound", capitalizing upon sound's capacity to delineate the ethereal topographies engendered via the vast, sublime-yet sublimated-infrastructures that we find ourselves immersed within.
Abstracts of the ICA
This paper discusses the 'Ancient Thoughts and Electric Buildings' project-an experimental, audio... more This paper discusses the 'Ancient Thoughts and Electric Buildings' project-an experimental, audio-led, virtual reality (VR) documentary that examines the portion of Toronto's downtown core that extends along the city's Gardner Expressway. This site traverses Canada's financial nexus and has been the recent locus of extensive condo and commercial development; simultaneously, it exists as a region that is (and has historically been) occupied by a significant number of homeless people.
My thesis project explores how cinematic space can be articulated within an acoustemological fram... more My thesis project explores how cinematic space can be articulated within an acoustemological framework. Resituating cinema within a sonic – rather than a visual – ontology affords a capacity for privileging sensory and sensual forms of mediation that have been for the most part subsumed by the dominance of the image. Transmissions from the Technological Sublime is an audio-visual work comprising seven audio channels (comprising six regular speakers arranged in a hexagonal array and one subwoofer) as well as a durational, large-scale, 3D animated video projection employing an extra-wide aspect ratio of 16:3. This project draws upon an expanded notion of sound as a medium that is not only vibratory but also anamnetic, encompassing the immaterial as well as the tactile and manifesting itself as topological, temporal and subjective. It also approaches the idea of space as a site that embraces the cognitive and cultural, and that can thus be similarly apprehended as both imaginary and su...
Journal of New Music Research, 2019
This paper discusses Points Further North, a VR documentary that applies an expanded acoustemo- l... more This paper discusses Points Further North, a VR documentary that applies an expanded acoustemo- logical framework to the acquisition and dissemination of audio-visual content in order to investigate a non-place that is characteristic of the Anthropocene. The project exploits the possibilities inherent in the amplification of the vibratory and electromagnetic spectra that permeate our urban environ- ments: infrasonic/tactile elements are disseminated via wearable haptic interfaces and the electrical emissions of our technotope are sonified via the via use of electromagnetic transducers. In addi- tion, the project explores the possibility of integrating mnemonic sound propagation as a relevant, affective component of a contingent soundscape.
My thesis project explores how cinematic space can be articulated within an acoustemological fra... more My thesis project explores how cinematic space can be articulated within an acoustemological framework. Re-situating cinema within a sonic – rather than a visual – ontology affords a capacity for privileging sensory and sensual forms of mediation that have been for the most part subsumed by the dominance of the image. Transmissions from the Technological Sublime is an audio-visual work comprising seven audio channels (comprising six regular speakers arranged in a hexagonal array and one subwoofer) as well as a durational, large-scale, 3D animated video projection employing an extra-wide aspect ratio of 16:3.
This project draws upon an expanded notion of sound as a medium that is not only vibratory but also anamnetic, encompassing the immaterial as well as the tactile and manifesting itself as topological, temporal and subjective. It also approaches the idea of space as a site that embraces the cognitive and cultural, and that can thus be similarly apprehended as both imaginary and substantive. Building upon a broadened approach to field-recording as a central research methodology and deploying the affective and tactile capacities of sound to bring a fictional, animated environment to life, the project seeks to engender an awareness of space that is vibratory, textural and evolving, rather than merely perspectival or fixed.
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Papers by Michael Trommer
This project draws upon an expanded notion of sound as a medium that is not only vibratory but also anamnetic, encompassing the immaterial as well as the tactile and manifesting itself as topological, temporal and subjective. It also approaches the idea of space as a site that embraces the cognitive and cultural, and that can thus be similarly apprehended as both imaginary and substantive. Building upon a broadened approach to field-recording as a central research methodology and deploying the affective and tactile capacities of sound to bring a fictional, animated environment to life, the project seeks to engender an awareness of space that is vibratory, textural and evolving, rather than merely perspectival or fixed.
This project draws upon an expanded notion of sound as a medium that is not only vibratory but also anamnetic, encompassing the immaterial as well as the tactile and manifesting itself as topological, temporal and subjective. It also approaches the idea of space as a site that embraces the cognitive and cultural, and that can thus be similarly apprehended as both imaginary and substantive. Building upon a broadened approach to field-recording as a central research methodology and deploying the affective and tactile capacities of sound to bring a fictional, animated environment to life, the project seeks to engender an awareness of space that is vibratory, textural and evolving, rather than merely perspectival or fixed.