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Perceptual immediacy in music listening Multimodality and the “in time/outside of time” dichotomy

in Versus n. 124, Sensorial Effectiveness. Sensoriality, immediacy, and presence in audiovisual media, pp.89-104

Abstract (italiano)

This paper is about sense-making in music listening. Starting from a systematic description of sensations in several modalities, it revolves around the “inside/outside of time” dichotomy. The former stresses the moment-to-moment history of successive acts of focal attention, the latter relies on simultaneous representation of sounding elements at a virtual level in memory and imagination. As such, there is a major distinction between first-hand experience and mediate knowledge that surpasses presentational immediacy. It is argued, further, that musical sense-making entails a whole array of epistemic and physical interactions with the sounds, which make listening such a rich and full experience.