Infrastructures for Immersion: Institutional Mediation of Spatial Audio

The paper that this session is built upon examines spatial sound as an infrastructural system – one shaped by institutional power, economic asymmetries, and curatorial mediation. Moving beyond technical and aesthetic analyses, it focuses on the material and political conditions which regulate access to immersive audio technologies.

Drawing on Jack Burnham’s critique of art-and-technology systems and theoretical frameworks from infrastructure studies, the paper analyses the 4DSOUND system at MONOM as a case study of institutionalised spatial sound. Through the lens of an artist’s first-hand experience, it exposes how access to high-end spatial infrastructure is governed by informal curatorial norms, financial barriers, and contractual control.

In contrast, the paper also considers DIY and site-specific sound practices as forms of alternative infrastructure: emphasising accessibility, contingency, and collective modes of listening. By framing spatial sound as a site of infrastructural politics, the paper argues for a critical reorientation of music technology discourse - one that centres questions of authorship, labor, and systemic access in the making of sonic experience.