What remains opaque in my area of work is the idea of spatiality. I got interested in immersive audio, often also called spatial audio several years ago. Then I realised that these technologies, such as binaural, produce immersion and spatiality and these are not the same thing. I’m not the first person to notice that immersion is a slippery idea, but spatiality is less well explored. The relationship between audio technology and spatiality is clear but also inconsistent. There’s some interplay between the sounds themselves, their placement around the microphone, acoustics, technology and probably the way a story is put together, so that perhaps listeners are primed to experience a sense of spatiality. Audio producers are sometimes surprised by the spatial qualities of their own work and may believe in the genius of the microphone at capturing space. But I’d like to think more about the genius of the edit…
