Reconfigurations: Unfolding the spaces of mobile listening

Abstract

Abstract This article considers some ways in which mobile listening – listening to music on headphones while being in, and moving through, public space – mediates the lived experience of space. I explore this particular human–technology relation through the lens of ‘anemone theory’, an embodied understanding of the movements of mediation as they modulate the real-time unfolding of experience. I contextualize my analysis with concepts from the fields of acoustic ecology and soundscape studies (e.g., acoustic transparency, hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes) and post-phenomenological perspectives on human–technology relations (e.g., technological intentionality).