The Bodiliness of Listening: From Vibration to Meaning in the Psychology of Sound Art

Abstract

Despite the “sonic turn” in the humanities, the psychology of sound art retains a visual-centric and cognitive bias. The analysis of sound is often reduced to its semantic interpretation and emotional associations, while its fundamental, material nature—the vibrational impact on the human body at a pre-reflective level—remains under-theorized. This leads to an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of the aesthetic and affective impact of sound art. The purpose of the study is to overcome this conceptual gap by developing and testing the concept of the “bodily dimension of listening”, focusing on the embodied nature of the auditory experience. Based on a synthesis of the philosophy of sound (C. Cox), psychoacoustics, and the phenomenology of perception (S. Fögelin), it is demonstrated that the body is not a passive recipient but an active resonator that co-constitutes the aesthetic event. The concept is verified through the analysis of case studies: a hypothetical sound art installation “Somatic Frequencies” and the “City in a Tree” project (A.M. Sosnovskaya), where bodily reactions (vibration, entrainment, muscle tension) act as the primary mechanism for generating meaning. The aesthetic experience of sound is fundamentally embodied. The proposed approach provides psychology of art, sound studies, and cultural studies with a new analytical tool for investigating the affective power of sound, rooted in the physiological reality of the human body as a resonating subject. The article is intended for researchers in the psychology of art, sound studies, cultural studies, and philosophy of aesthetics.