The Aural Cartographer's Dilemma

Austin Franklin

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This paper introduces the aural cartographer’s dilemma: contemporary digital tools for spatial audio excel at mapping sound objects within coordinate systems but conflate coordinate-based representations of space with the embodied, relational experience of sound. It traces this inheritance from stereo panning through MPEG-I, demonstrating that successive technical paradigms instead reproduce a composer-score-conductor model through ever sophisticated means. It argues this is not a technical limitation awaiting solution but a philosophical commitment requiring reconsideration.

Citation

Austin Franklin. 2026. The Aural Cartographer's Dilemma. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784447 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_147,
 abstract = {This paper introduces the aural cartographer’s dilemma: contemporary digital tools for spatial audio excel at mapping sound objects within coordinate systems but conflate coordinate-based representations of space with the embodied, relational experience of sound. It traces this inheritance from stereo panning through MPEG-I, demonstrating that successive technical paradigms instead reproduce a composer-score-conductor model through ever sophisticated means. It argues this is not a technical limitation awaiting solution but a philosophical commitment requiring reconsideration.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {147},
 author = {Austin Franklin},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784447},
 editor = {Benedict Gaster and João Tragtenberg and Anna Xambó and Tom Mitchell},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {6},
 pages = {1200--1205},
 title = {The Aural Cartographer's Dilemma},
 track = {paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_147.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}