Spatial Sound Does Not Exist: Toward a Contextual Model of Spatial Meaning Making

Spatial Sound Does Not Exist: Toward a Contextual Model of Spatial Meaning-Making Johannes Scherzer spæs—lab for spatial aesthetics in sound, Stockholmer Str. 4, 13359 Berlin, Germany [email protected] http://spaes.org/ Abstract. Drawing on phenomenology, predictive perception, and scenographic practice, the paper redefines spatialization as the staging of perceptual and contextual conditions through which space becomes intelligible in experience. Two conceptual tools are introduced. The spatial aggregate models spatial perception as a composite of exophenomenal evidence and endophenomenal contribution within crossmodal integration. The contextual model of spatial meaning-making specifies four adjacent contexts—material, aesthetic, personal, and sociocultural—through which spatial meaning circulates as an interpretative process. Together, these tools shift attention in spatial design from format and coordinate mapping toward perception, interpretation, and meaning. Although the analysis is not limited to any single sensory modality, examples focus on sound for concreteness. The contribution is both conceptual and practical: a perceptually grounded framework that helps designers, researchers, and technologists understand how spatial meaning becomes available in experience across media, formats, and disciplines. Keywords: spatial audio ·spatialization ·spatial perception ·predictive processing ·hermeneutics ·phenomenology ·sound scenography 1Introduction The notion of spatial sound has long promised to extend the auditory field beyond stereo [23, 24]. Traditional approaches to spatial audio tend to emphasize fidelity: how accurately a system reproduces the geometry of a room, the direction of a source, or the movement of a listener [2,17,1]. Such parameters shape acoustic conditions but not necessarily spatial experience. Many practitioners sense this intuitively: that spatiality emerges through perception, through the ways listeners integrate auditory, visual, and bodily cues into a sense of place [4,14]. Yet in practice, spatiality is still commonly treated as a technical property, as something that can be added to sound through coordinates or delivered by specialized technologies. Marketing narratives reinforce this belief, promising immersion through devices rather than perception. In my own work on sound scenography, I have observed how fragile this assumption becomes in practice. Some of the most compelling spatial experiences Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 409 2 J. Scherzer have emerged from a single loudspeaker, while others have felt remarkably flat despite sophisticated spatial audio systems. These contrasts reveal that spatiality might not belong to technology as such, but to how sound is contextualized by space, narrative, and attention. Perhaps the term spatial sound conceals more than it reveals. By combining conceptual rigor and reflective, phenomenological inquiry, this paper aims to accompany the reader through a gradual reframing of the concept of spatial sound, questioning its underlying assumptions as a category, and reconsidering how sound becomes spatial in experience. The guiding question is: Does spatial sound exist, and what does it imply for spatial design1practice? 2DeconstructingSpatialSound To examine the nature of spatial sound, it is necessary to consider the two terms that compose it: space and sound. Their relation may or may not give rise to a coherent idea we call spatial sound.Ratherthanbeginningfromtheory,we begin from phenomena. This prevents drawing conclusions from the assumptions under review and asks that prior assumptions be set aside so they do not steer observation. It also keeps the argument answerable to perceptual evidence: how perception operates, and how sound and space intertwine in experience. Three questions structure the inquiry. First, how do we construct objects from the continuous flow of sensory information, and what makes a sound become a perceptual object in space? Second, how do prior expectations shape the spatial meaning we attribute to sound? Third, can spatial experience ever be purely auditory? Together, these questions establish the perceptual ground on which the idea of spatial sound can then be revisited. 2.1 Interpretation and the Construction of Objects What does it mean for any object to be perceived? Perception does not merely reveal what is already there; it brings objects into the sphere of experience. To perceive is to translate, to render something intelligible to consciousness. This act of translation implies that objects are never fully given in experience but mediated, shaped by both what exists and how it appears. Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) formulates this mediation through the Quadruple Object [11,12]. Every object, he argues, exists in a tension between its real and sensual dimensions, each possessing its own object and qualities. The real object withdraws from access; it exists independently of any direct encounter with us. The sensual object is the one that appears in experience, composed of sensual qualities that can be perceived or imagined. Perception therefore never reaches the object itself but only its interface: a dynamic 1Here, “design” denotes the purposeful shaping of perceptual–contextual conditions for spatial meaning, used broadly across artistic, scenographic, architectural, engineering, curatorial, and research-led practice. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 410 Spatial Sound Doesn’t Exist 3 correlation between presence and withdrawal. This tension constitutes what it means for something to appear. Importantly, this object relation applies to both external and internal phenomena. The perceived song and the recalled song each constitute an object in consciousness. They differ in origin, not in ontological status; both are sensed through interpretative acts. Perception is the medium in which the real and the sensual continually negotiate their relation. When applied to sound, this model clarifies why auditory phenomena resist complete capture. The real sound — vibrational energy propagating through air — withdraws behind the sensual sound we actually hear. Its timbre, position, and movement are sensual qualities emerging within perception. The same holds for space: the real space — the physical configuration of matter and geometry — remains inaccessible, while the sensual space is the lived spatiality that listeners inhabit. Both sound and space are thus objects that unfold at the threshold between material existence and perceptual construction. While Harman presents the quadruple object as the basic ontological model through which all entities relate, its structure can also illuminate the interpretative character of perception. The gap between real and sensual poles, between what withdraws and what appears, mirrors the space in which perceptual meaning is formed. In phenomenological terms, perception already interprets: it organizes sensory phenomena into coherent objects [15]. In hermeneutic terms, this act of organization constitutes understanding itself [9]. Reading Harman through this lens shifts the model from metaphysical description to perceptual process. The quadruple object becomes a scaffold for examining how meaning arises as sensory evidence is continually reinterpreted within experience. From this standpoint, where objects appear through mediation, perception cannot be understood as passive reception. If every object, auditory or spatial, is constituted through interaction and expectation, then perception must involve continuous prediction: an ongoing estimation of what the world is likely to present next. 2.2 Perception as Prediction How do prior expectations shape the spatial meaning we attribute to sound? Every encounter with the world seems immediate, yet perception depends on prior models that continuously anticipate sensory input. The act of perceiving is therefore not passive registration but active interpretation, a constant negotiation between expectation and evidence. Predictive accounts of perception describe the brain as a generative system that maintains and updates internal models of the world [13,6,8]. Anil Seth characterizes perception as a form of controlled hallucination, in which sensory signals serve not to construct experience from scratch but to constrain ongoing predictions about what is likely to be out there [20]. Perception works by keeping expectation and evidence in dialogue; too much of either, and the world would dissolve into noise or fantasy. What we call “reality” is the best hypothesis our perceptual system can sustain. In this view, experience is fundamentally Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 411 4 J. Scherzer interpretative: the world appears coherent because our perceptual models keep it so. When applied to sound, predictive processing clarifies how the auditory world is stabilized from fleeting acoustic cues. The brain continuously infers the causes of pressure variations, grouping them into sources and events [4]. Recognition does not follow from the waveform alone; it follows when incoming evidence fits a prior expectation about what such a sound should be. Space is inferred in the same way. Listeners maintain predictive mappings between spectral cues, reflections, and movements, allowing them to anticipate how the environment will behave when they move or when a source changes. The sense of spatial coherence arises when these anticipations and the sensory evidence remain in balance. In light of the foregoing, this perspective reframes perception as a generative relation between what is sensed and what is expected. Objects, whether sounds or spaces, are not fixed givens but evolving hypotheses that perception tests and revises. Yet these hypotheses rarely operate within a single sensory domain. If prediction sustains coherence, it must integrate information across modalities. The next section therefore turns to the crossmodal nature of perception, where auditory, visual, and bodily cues converge in the construction of sound and space. 2.3 Crossmodal Nature of Perception Can our spatial experience ever be purely auditory, or is it rather an integration of multiple sensory modalities? Each modality provides partial, sometimes conflicting evidence about the environment, yet the outcome of perception is singular: we do not see, hear, and touch separate objects but one. The integration of these sensory streams—what is known as crossmodal or multisensory perception—reveals that experience is inherently synthetic. Research in cognitive science shows that perception depends on the continuous exchange of information between modalities. Visual, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive2signals interact at multiple levels of the perceptual system, from neural circuits to higher-level cognition, shaping each other’s salience and meaning [22,21]. Sounds influence how distances are judged; vision modifies the localization of auditory events. The so-called ventriloquism effect3and related phenomena demonstrate that spatial perception arises from probabilistic weighting across modalities rather than from any single sensory channel. Crossmodal coupling is therefore not an exception but the default mode of perceptual organization. For sound and space, this means that auditory and visual information cooperate in establishing the stability of objects and environments. The brain continuously compares what is seen with what is heard to maintain a consistent sense of 2Proprioception refers to the internal sense of the body’s position, posture, and movement, mediated by receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints. 3Avisuallyinducedmislocalizationofsoundtowardasynchronous,spatiallydisplaced visual source; typically explained by reliability-weighted multisensory integration. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 412 Spatial Sound Doesn’t Exist 5 location and materiality. A sound gains spatial identity not only from its acoustic cues but from how those cues correspond to visible or imagined structures in the environment. Likewise, space acquires its perceptual depth from sonic confirmation, such as the resonance, reverberation, and occlusion that accompany movement and sight. Sound and space thus co-emerge as complementary dimensions of the same perceptual synthesis. We can understand the sonic dimension of objects as one mode through which an object presents itself to our senses. As these strands converge, we can understand perception as constructive, predictive, and inherently crossmodal. Objects, whether of sound or of space, are not isolated givens but relational events distributed across the senses. The next section therefore turns to how the intertwined ideas of sound and space can be analyzed in light of this perceptual framework. 2.4 Why Spatial Sound Doesn’t Exist Taken together, these observations converge with established auditory phenomenologies and sound-studies perspectives that treat listening as an interpretative, embodied act rather than a neutral reception of acoustic data [14,16,5,25,10,19]. Within this shared horizon, space is not a container in which perception happens but a structure that emerges through relational organization of objects. Harman’s ontology reminds us that no object, including space itself, is ever fully given; it appears through the interplay between its real and sensual dimensions [11]. Seth’s account of predictive perception complements this view: spatial coherence is not revealed by the senses but sustained through active interpretation, as the perceiver anticipates how the world should sound, look, and feel [20]. Crossmodal research confirms that this coherence is achieved through integration rather than isolation: auditory, visual, and bodily cues jointly construct the experience of space [22]. Space, then, is not a pre-existing entity but adynamicrelationshipamongitsconstitutingobjects,includingsound.Every space is already sounding because perception never operates through a single sense or without the auditory dimension. We constantly balance expectations and sensory evidence about how a space should sound, even when that sound is absence itself. In a vacuum, where no acoustic wave can propagate, silence is not aphysicalsoundbutaphenomenalquality,perceptuallyconstitutedfromthe absence of vibration. Space is always constituted through its auditory dimension; sound is not an optional extension but a constitutive condition of space itself. Likewise, to perceive sound as an object is to encounter a network of relations rather than a single source. Sound arises through the interaction of physical vibration, spatial propagation, bodily orientation, and interpretative expectation. In Harman’s terms, the real sound withdraws behind its sensual manifestation; in Seth’s, it is stabilized by the predictions that keep perception coherent. Crossmodal research further shows that the experience of sound is jointly organized with other sensory modalities, which constrain and confirm what is heard. All sound is therefore inherently spatial. Even in the limiting case of headphone playback with a completely dry signal, spatial information is conveyed by the absence of reflections, in-head localization, and the sensed boundary between Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 413 6 J. Scherzer self and world. To design sound is to design spatial experience; spatial design is not an optional extension but a constitutive condition of sound itself. If all space is sounding, and if all sound is spatial, then the distinction between sound and spatial sound collapses, both theoretically and practically. What is often called spatial sound is simply sound. In this light, the category becomes redundant: spatial sound doesn’t exist. 3 The Spatial Aggregate: Ontological Structure of Emergent Perception Dismantling “spatial sound” as a category does not invalidate the practices it names. The engineering of spatial-audio systems, their use as instruments, and the artistic and scientific study of spatial experience remain valid. What we call spatial sound design or spatial composition describes genuine modes of practice, but their spatiality does not reside in the signals or technologies themselves. It emerges from the processes by which these practices engage with space as a perceptual and interpretative phenomenon. Spatiality, in other words, is not a property of sound but a perspective within which sound is shaped, designed, and understood. Recognizing this means shifting attention from “spatial sound” as a format to spatialization as a process: how sound participates in composing the conditions through which space becomes perceivable. What, then, does it mean to spatialize sound in design practice? As we found out in section 2, space and sound co-emerge in perception. Both are constituted through the interplay of external structure and internal organization, of evidence and expectation. From this perspective, spatialization cannot be understood as a technical addition of space to sound, but as a continuation of this perceptual relation within design practice. Every spatial experience involves a correspondence between what is materially configured and what is perceptually composed. To spatialize, then, is to engage with this relation deliberately to compose the meeting point between external form and internal sense. This relation can be described as a continuum between two components as in the spatial aggregate introduced here (Fig. 1). It builds on Grimshaw and Garner’s notion of the sonic aggregate, which describes how sound experience arises through the dynamic relation of multiple perceptual cues [10]. In their account, the sonic aggregate is the result of two components: the exosonic (source, signal, medium, environment, and technologies) and the endosonic (bodily orientation, attention, memory, affect, and cultural framing). Sound, on this view, is not any single layer or the mere vibration we sense with our ears, but what emerges from the ongoing relation between exosonic conditions and endosonic organization [10]. By incorporating the groundwork laid out in the previous section, we can reframe the aggregate spatially, emphasizing how spatial meaning itself emerges from the interplay of what I propose to call endophenomenal and exophenomenal components. On one side lies the exophenomenal component,themeasurable,externally observable configuration of the environment. Here, spatial perception emerges Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 414 Spatial Sound Doesn’t Exist 7 ENDOPHENOMENAL EXOPHENOMENAL SPATIAL AGGREGATE Fig. 1. The spatial aggregate. A composite perceptual field formed by the interaction of exophenomenal evidence and endophenomenal contributions, showing how external and internal cues converge in spatial perception. from acoustic evidence: directionality, reflection, delay, and diffusion provide structure for localization and depth [2]. On the other side lies the endophenomenal component,theinternallyconstructeddimensionofimagination,memory, and affect. Here, experience depends on how that evidence resonates with internal states: anticipation, bodily orientation, and learned associations [3, 15]. Their intersection defines the spatial aggregate: a composite field where spatial phenomena emerge from the interplay of external structure and internal interpretation. The spatial aggregate is a dynamic equilibrium between what sensual cues afford and what the perceiver infers. It is the perceptual moment in which external and internal conditions co-determine what is experienced as space. Understanding spatialization through this lens shifts attention from audio technologies to experiential design. The designer or composer works not only with signals but with expectations, with how listeners interpret external cues through internal frameworks. To spatialize is to shape the balance between exophenomenal constraint and endophenomenal freedom. Technical precision may support this balance, but it does not guarantee it. What matters is how physical structure and perceptual construction meet each other. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 415 8 J. Scherzer This model clarifies why spatial experience is always variable and contextsensitive [7]. The same sound field may appear coherent or alien to the listening context, depending on how the perceiver navigates the aggregate. The same reverberation might suggest grandeur in a cathedral or menace in a bunker, depending on how it is framed endophenomenally. Spatialization thus becomes less a matter of reproduction than of modulation: guiding attention along the continuum between the external and the internal, the factual and the interpretative. In light of the crossmodal nature of perception, what disappears is the idea that spatiality can be contained within sound alone. What remains instead is the perceptual relation itself, the continuous negotiation through which space is composed in experience: through sound and its complementary modes of perception. The Spatial Aggregate outlined the ontological structure through which spatial experience arises. Yet this structure alone does not explain how spatial meaning becomes intelligible within cultural, aesthetic, and personal frames. The following model therefore extends the argument from perception to interpretation, from how space emerges to how it acquires meaning. 4FromEmergencetoMeaning:TheContextualModel of Spatial Meaning-Making The Contextual Model of Spatial Meaning-Making (CMSM) (Fig. 2) builds on the relational structure of the Spatial Aggregate, extending the argument from how spatial perception arises to how spatial meaning becomes intelligible and applicable in design. Adapting the structural logic of earlier work [18], the CMSM shifts focus from describing experience to staging it—from perception as relation to design as interpretation. It serves as a conceptual map that situates spatial meaning within four interdependent contexts where design and experience meet. Within this topology, spatial meaning circulates along four adjacent contexts that together constitute the field of experience. The material context comprises the physical and technological conditions through which sound and space manifest. The aesthetic context concerns the compositional and affective arrangements that shape expression. The personal context refers to the embodied and imaginative apprehension of space. The sociocultural context frames these experiences within shared languages, practices, and values. Each context articulates a distinct mode of interpretation within the spatial continuum, together forming the field through which design composes meaning. Material context. Defines the physical and technological parameters that condition spatial experience: architecture, surface properties, loudspeaker configurations, and signal structures. These factors specify and constrain what is externally available to perception, shaping the exophenomenal side of the aggregate. Design within this context focuses on how acoustic and physical structures invite perceptual engagement rather than prescribing a fixed spatial meaning. Aesthetic context. Mediates between material structure and perception. It presents physical arrangement to the senses and conveys intention from the perProc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 416 Spatial Sound Doesn’t Exist 9 AESTHETIC PERSONAL SOCIOCULTURAL MATERIAL embedding articulation affect institutionalization conditioning recognition sensation materialization Fig. 2. Contextual Model of Spatial Meaning-Making (CMSM). The model shows four contexts and their reciprocal links. Spatial meaning circulates locally along adjacent links (Material–Aesthetic, Aesthetic–Personal, Personal–Sociocultural, Sociocultural– Material); diagonals are indirect. sonal domain back into material form through composition. Here, artistic and narrative aims meet the affordances of perception. Aesthetic design therefore orients attention in both directions: from external configuration toward the perceiver’s interpretative stance, and from that stance back toward concrete spatial decisions. Personal context. Encompasses the embodied, mnemonic, and affective dimensions of spatial experience. Every perceiver brings a history of associations, cultural references, and bodily habits to the encounter with space. Endophenomenal factors, such as memory, expectation, and prior knowledge, determine experience jointly with what exophenomenal conditions provide as sensory evidence and constraints. In other words, the same acoustic scene will initiate different perceptual organizations depending on the listener’s personal context. Design decisions that attend to the perceiver’s temporal perspective can activate this layer of spatial meaning. Sociocultural context. Structures the shared practices, conventions, and institutions through which space becomes intelligible. These codes shape what counts as plausible spatial organization and prime expectations. Conversely, conProc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 417