2026 Theses Doctoral

Composing Listening: Toward a Theory of Mediated Aurality as Compositional Praxis

Mastel, Joshua

This study develops an original theory of paramusical mediated aurality through a phenomenologically grounded account of how technological mediation can transform a listener’s affective relationship to environmental sound, opening habitual listening to aesthetic experience through perceptual defamiliarization.

Chapter 1 establishes the phenomenological foundations through an analysis of the dimensions of aurality, drawing on the work of Don Ihde. Chapter 2 presents a critical theory of mediated aurality, bringing Ihde’s postphenomenological framework into dialogue with the field of sound and media studies, and surveying specific examples of consumer listening technology to identify the aesthetic potential that commercially available devices overlook. Chapter 3 plots a constellation of artistic precedents that have pursued that potential, with a focus on the work of Max Neuhaus as a salient example of aurality-as-material. Occupying a more personal register, Chapter 4 functions as a practice-based case study.

After situating the theory within my own compositional portfolio, it culminates in a proposal for an applied system of augmented aurality, which takes the form of a mobile headphone-based software program that processes environmental sound in real time to generate subtle, affectively charged sonic experiences for an individual listener. This system stands as a proof of concept for the practice of “composing listening” this dissertation points toward. The central claim is that aurality constitutes a rich domain for compositional inquiry, and through deliberate technological mediation, it can serve as the basis for a perceptually-expansive compositional praxis.