WORKS

Thinking with Sound

4 min read

Robson, McPherson & Bryan-Kinns, CHI 2024 · Theory-framework · Read 2026-08-09

1. What they did

An ultrasonic sound installation, Being With The Waves. Multi-channel sound is modulated into the ultrasonic range; visitors wear special headphones that demodulate it back into audible sound; moving through the space changes what they hear through the Doppler effect.

The installation is a research probe, not a product. Twelve participants in a lab study, semi-structured plus micro-phenomenological interviews, analysed diffractively. The point is not to show a clever installation but to argue a theoretical position: that sound as physical material lets us study embodied, entangled experience.

2. Method

  • The installation as research probe.
  • 12 participants (8 women, 4 men, 21–59). People with sound or music backgrounds were excluded.
  • Two-interview design: semi-structured to get the story, then micro-phenomenological to interrogate the microscopic detail of a sensation — direction, size, pitch, duration.
  • Diffractive analysis: Barad’s entanglement theory used as a prism that data passes through, watching for the patterns produced by the refraction.
  • Theory: Karen Barad’s agential realism, plus sound studies and sonic materialism.

3. Findings and contribution

  • Barad’s entanglement theory actually practised — the first work in HCI to apply agential realism to the design intent, the study method and the analysis at once. Epistemological consistency all the way through.
  • Two provocations rather than design implications:
    1. Sound as collective, public and entangled — sonic experience is not a private interior event but something constituted in space with other people, objects and waves.
    2. Sound as a tool for thinking — listening is not receiving information, it is a way of thinking. Thinking with sound, not thinking about sound.
  • A methodological contribution: micro-phenomenological interviewing plus diffractive analysis, and how the pair holds together.
  • A critique of HCI’s visual bias. Sound is not an auditory icon standing in for a visual symbol; it has material properties — it surrounds you, it is physical, it cannot be switched off.
  • Design principle: build a strange tool whose purpose is not obvious, so that people explore it instead of using it — and the exploring is the thinking.

4. What it gives me

  • Entanglement is citable. If the thesis wants to argue that an interactive installation is not a tool but a partner performing alongside the audience, agential realism supports it. I do not need to master Barad, only to cite the claim that experience lives in between.
  • The two-interview design transfers directly. Semi-structured for the whole story, micro-phenomenological for the grain. M-P’s questioning — where did that come from, how big, what pitch, how long — is a concrete way to turn “embodied experience” into analysable data.
  • Multi-modal epistemology gives me the argument for why my installation needs more than a screen. Different senses produce different kinds of knowledge.
  • Epistemological consistency is the real lesson for my methodology chapter. I cannot write “I used RTA because everyone does”. I have to be able to say what my epistemological position is and why RTA suits it.
  • Provocations instead of design implications — a second way to end a thesis, if I do not want a dry list of recommendations.
  • Sonic Interaction Design is an entire literature to draw on if my installation uses sound.
  • The transferable skill: an intuition like sound feels different to me than looking at a screen can be converted into an argument the HCI community can actually discuss.

5. Questions it left me

  • Barad is heavy. Does my thesis need theory at this level, or is citing this paper as “someone already did the heavy lifting” enough?
  • Diffractive analysis is unfriendly to a beginner. If I use RTA, will a reviewer ask why I did not use this paper’s method — and what do I say?
  • I did not fully follow their Findings. What do diffractively-produced findings look like, compared to RTA themes? Come back to this.
  • Should my installation be a strange tool — not immediately legible, so people explore it? Does that contradict gameful design’s demand that rules be clear?
  • This was a 12-person lab study. If my installation lives in an exhibition or public space, does M-P interviewing still work? What does in-the-wild do to a phenomenological method?
  • They excluded people with music backgrounds. Should I similarly exclude people with media art or interaction design backgrounds?

Graph View

Backlinks