Sonic Bodies: Sonification and the Hybridization of Aesthetic Experience

This article examines the use of sonification, and movement sonification, as a tool for engagement with artworks in galleries and museums. It focuses on the relationship between artwork and sighted, partially sighted and non-sighted visitors and the way sonification, by offering an audio-centred mode of engagement, complicates the aesthetic experience. By drawing on Bruno Latour’s discussion on hybrids (1993) as well as with reference to examples of the use of sonification in gallery spaces, the article argues that rather than assuming the artwork to be a finished and stable object, movement sonification approaches the artwork as a blueprint of proximal, conceptual and material relationships which are animated by a moving-listening subject. As such, the article concludes, movement sonification can have radical implications for the way artworks are conceived as well as the way the aesthetic experience is configured.