Audible Imagery: Creative Contemplations on the Sounds of Home

Video

This pictorial paper explores domestic sounds’ capacity to evoke imagery of everyday inhabited spaces. In recent decades, accelerated digitalization has been transforming our everyday sonic environment, and new interactive possibilities, such as multimodal and embodied interaction, draw attention to sound as a communicative medium. In that context, how can artificial product sounds integrate into the present ecology heard at home? This pictorial includes visual impressions of domestic sounds as documented in Japan through a sound diary experiment, and those drawn by their listeners during a participatory exhibition in Tel-Aviv. The drawings offer insight into the creative sense-making strategies that listeners employ to situate acousmatic sounds within the interrelated composition of their everyday auditory experience. Furthermore, they demonstrate drawing as a unique research tool for constructing and sharing meaning during the product sound design process. By contemplating drawing as a creative output and a reflective cognition process, this initial multimodal exploration highlights the participatory nature of domestic sound interactions, and the opportunities posed by drawing for designing future home soundscapes.