via Thinking with Sound (CHI ‘24)
What it says
Against the assumption that vision is the primary way of knowing and the other senses are supporting evidence. Each sense produces a different kind of knowledge — what the ears know is not a lower-resolution version of what the eyes know. The senses form an integrated network rather than a ranked list.
Does it hold for my work
This is the argument I need for a question I have been avoiding: why should the thesis installation be more than a screen?
My direction is screen-based interactive experience. That word puts vision at the centre by definition. If I add sound, or spatial audio, or anything the body feels, I have to be able to say why it is not decoration. This is the reason: it is a different kind of knowing, not a richer version of the same one.
Where it is uncomfortable
It also argues against my own framing. If sensory hierarchy is the problem, a screen-based installation is already committed to the top of the hierarchy. I either defend the screen deliberately — as the familiar cultural object people arrive knowing how to read — or I stop calling the work screen-based.
I have not resolved that, and it is a real tension rather than a wording problem.