The Sound Experience

In Chapter 2, Ceraso directs our attention to how one’s senses need to be reeducated so listening and sonic encounters are not just about hearing sounds, but experiencing and recognizing how one’s body responds to sounds.  She explains the intersecting qualities of sound studies and rhetoric and composition, and how listening involves all of the body; students should be taught to recognize that listening is a full body experience. Christine Sun Kim, a deaf artist, explains sonic encounters provide visual as well as audible information; therefore, hearing is not the only consideration when considering sound’s effects on people. To help teach students this concept, Ceraso includes a project called “My Listening Body,” and “the aim of this assignment is to gain a critical awareness of how sound shapes and affects embodied experience” (p. 51).  She explains “by paying attention to the sensory convergences that happen during sonic events is a practice that can help anyone cultivate more reflective, sensitive listening habits” (p. 35).  She cites John McCarthy and Peter Wright who describe how multimodal listening practices create an opportunity for listeners to understand that sound and sonic interactions involve more than just hearing, but rather are an ecological event (p. 35), resulting in students becoming more capable of producing creations using sound in a purposeful way. Throughout this chapter, Ceraso reinforces the idea that multimodal listening pedagogy must provide opportunities that will not only encourage students to create projects that take into consideration how sound affects every part of the body and how it affects people differently, but also gives them the knowledge to more adeptly understand and interact with sonic spaces outside of the classroom.  She finishes the chapter by reiterating the idea that hearing and listening; sonic events/experiences and interactions; and interdisciplinary multimodal composition are related and have multisensory responses.