Module 0: Threshold / Entryway
Perception at the Center: The Body as the Starting Point of Immersive Audio
Zachary Lieberman – Ripple Study #4 – 2024
“The main challenge is to create work that touches people on an emotional level, rather than making them think about the technology or wonder how it was made.
To make poems, not demos—
to create work that is brief but intense, rhythmic, and meaningful,
instead of a demonstration that feels like technology for technology’s sake.”
Zach Lieberman – Multimedia Artist
Introduction.
Before we talk about sound, we need to talk about space.
Because sound
exists in relation,
exists within an environment,
exists between bodies.
Without space, there is no resonance.
Without resonance, there is no perception.
And without perception, there is no experience.
Space is not an empty vessel to be filled.
It is an active condition:
it defines what is heard, how it is heard,
and above all, from where it is heard.
To work with sound is to intervene in the architecture of listening.
It is to shape time through movement.
It is to build relationships between presence and absence.
And space is the field of action.
As early as 1906, mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poincaré challenged the understanding of space, emphasizing the impossibility of imagining an empty space.
“It is impossible to imagine empty space; all our efforts to picture a pure space—one from which the shifting images of material objects are excluded—can only result in a representation where vividly colored surfaces are replaced by faintly colored lines, and we cannot carry this to the end without everything disappearing and ending in nothingness.”
In other words, a space exists because we have references—because we can say that this room has four walls and a ceiling, or that it borders the house next door.
Poincaré offers a reflection on the relationship between space and movement:
“I am at a specific point in Paris, in the Place du Panthéon, and I say: ‘I’ll return here tomorrow.’ If someone asks me, ‘Do you mean to return to the same place in space?’ I’ll be tempted to answer ‘Yes,’ but I would be wrong.
The reason for this error lies in the fact that, by tomorrow, the Earth will have traveled a considerable distance, carrying the Place du Panthéon more than 2 million kilometers. If I tried to be more precise in my description, it wouldn’t help much, because the Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun, and the Sun itself moves in relation to the Milky Way. All this movement happens on a scale we’re unable to perceive, so we completely ignore how far the Place du Panthéon really moves in a single day.
In short, what I meant to say was: ‘Tomorrow I’ll see the dome and the pediment of the Panthéon again,’ and if the Panthéon didn’t exist, my sentence would lose its meaning—and space, as we understand it, would vanish.”
What Poincaré tells us is that space is not a fixed or absolute entity. Rather, it is a dynamic, relative construction shaped by our perception and interaction with the world, where the reference points we recognize play a fundamental role in how we experience it.
Usually, in my in-person workshops, this is one of the most revealing moments. I invite participants to do a simple exercise that opens up very deep questions about their perception of space.
Exercises
Exercise: The Shapes of Space
Objective: Reflect on immediate spatial perception.
Duration: 2 minutes.
Instructions:
- Take a blank sheet of paper.
- Draw, using just a few lines, the geometry of the space you are in right now.
- The drawing doesn’t need to be detailed. What matters is representing how you perceive the shape of the space: is it rectangular, square, circular, irregular?
- Add isolated words that help describe the space.
- These can be sensations related to sound, light, size, temperature, or any other aspect you perceive.
Do not write full sentences. Use single words or isolated concepts.
Note: Don’t aim for precision or realism. The goal is to pause, observe, and record how you feel and represent the space you occupy at this moment.
Still frame from Amanece — Sol Rezza, 2023
Although simple, this exercise opens deep doors. Many times, I encounter unexpected representations: spiral spaces, broken shapes, floating structures, circular rooms that don’t physically exist but do perceptually.
I remember a student who drew their space as an inverted cone because they felt the sound was “falling” from above. Another student represented it as a sound box floating inside a larger one.
What’s most interesting is that these images are often deeply connected to cultural, emotional, or sensory aspects: some perceive space mainly through sight, others primarily through hearing, and there are those who feel it more through temperature, air pressure, or even the texture of the floor.
Understanding this intimate relationship between perception and space is fundamental for approaching sound design. Because every spatial analysis is, at its core, an interpretation: a subjective reading of the environment that, even when it seems static, transforms with us.
This is key to thinking about how a sonic narrative is constructed—not only in technical terms but in how the arrangement of sounds interacts with the body, the space, and the experience.
For decades, conventions around sound organization—in recorded music, film, radio—were relatively stable. But current spatialization technologies have radically changed the landscape.
Today, the creator’s perspective and the listener’s perception are so variable that production strategies must also adapt to these new ways of listening.
Our understanding of space is deeply intertwined with the body. As Merleau-Ponty asserts, we do not think of the world as something external; we live it from within. The body is not a passive observer—it is an active part of perception. Therefore, every space we inhabit—and every sound experience we design—is also a way of constructing reality.
A reflection that deepens this idea comes from architect Juhani Pallasmaa in his book The Eyes of the Skin. He proposes that architecture—and we could extend this to sound—is not experienced solely through sight, but through all the senses. He speaks of a multisensory perception of space, where touch, hearing, temperature, movement, and time all participate in the construction of dwelling.
It’s a brief but powerful read that I highly recommend, especially if you’re interested in exploring how the environment inscribes itself in the body, and how we can design experiences (sonic, visual, or spatial) that engage with that sensory depth.
3D animated visualization of Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis, created by Stephen Malinowski using the Music Animation Machine: a graphic interpretation of its 40 voices through moving lines, colors, and shapes.
Exercise: Dwelling in Sound
Objective: Explore how sound constructs and transforms the perception of space.
Duration: 12 minutes.
Instructions:
- Put on your headphones.
- Play the following audio fragment:
- While listening, close your eyes and let the voices surround you. Ask yourself: what kind of space do you feel you’re in now? Take note of the following observations:
How do you perceive the space?
How do you feel the sound moves?
Write down isolated words that describe sensations, movements, dimensions, or characteristics of the sound space.
Note: This is not about analyzing the music or searching for meaning, but about observing how sound organizes space in your perception.
What you just heard is a fragment of Spem in alium by the English composer Thomas Tallis—a choral work written for 40 voices, divided into eight choirs of five voices each.
Although its exact date of composition is uncertain, it is estimated to have been created between 1550 and 1575, possibly to celebrate the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The most fascinating aspect, however, is not just its vocal scale, but its spatial design.
One of the most widely accepted theories suggests that this piece was conceived to be performed at Nonsuch Palace, an impressive building commissioned by King Henry VIII that no longer exists, though records and reconstructions remain. It is believed that the shape of the banquet hall—octagonal, with three internal balconies—directly influenced the arrangement of the voices: four choirs surrounding the listener at ground level, and four more positioned above.
In other words, Tallis didn’t just write for multiple voices—he imagined sound in three dimensions. His aim wasn’t to fill the space, but to shape it through the movement of voices, creating an immersive environment long before the modern concept of immersive sound existed.
This drive to surround the listener with sound is not exclusive to the Renaissance. From ancient circular chants to the rituals of Indigenous cultures across the world, the idea of sound inhabiting space—rather than merely occupying it—has been a constant.
Just like today’s sound designers, Tallis was already experimenting with the placement of sound as an expressive tool. His work stands as an early example of how spatiality can be an integral part of a musical narrative.
Although Spem in alium was not the first sacred work to experiment with the spatial distribution of voices, it is one of the few that organizes sound not only horizontally, but also vertically, anticipating what we would now call a 3D environment.
Centuries later, in 2001, artist Janet Cardiff took this piece to another level with a multichannel reinterpretation. Her version, installed in churches, museums, and open spaces, allowed contemporary listeners to experience that three-dimensionality from within—walking among the voices, each one played through a separate speaker.
These kinds of experiences remind us that space holds narrative value in itself: it shapes perception, gives character to the environment, and transforms the way we inhabit sound.
Now, I invite you to return to the first exercise:
Take a sheet of paper and draw the space you’re in once again.
Has anything changed after listening?
Can you imagine how sound would move within it?
Final recommendation:
- If possible, listen to the CD version of The Tallis Scholars sing Thomas Tallis (1994, Gimell label). The audio quality is noticeably superior to what’s available on streaming platforms, and that makes a significant difference when it comes to perceiving the spatial detail of the piece.
- Bill Fontana: The makings of a sound sculptor