Mobile Music Listening – an aesthetic and aestheticizing practice

Abstract

How are we to conceptualize the experiences of mobile music listeners as they move through the city listening to a private soundtrack? The phenomenon has been described as an aestheticization of urban space (Bull, 2002, 2005, 2007; Hosokawa 1984 a.o.), and this perspective seems to focus on the listeners’ wish to alter and manipulate the impression of the surroundings. This article, however, explores and re-thinks how the terms aestheticization and aesthetic experience may be used to describe the specific relationship between the listener and the surroundings, which is established through the act of listening. To support this focus and claim I refer amongst others to Morten Kyndrup’s thoughts on the aesthetic relation (Kyndrup, 2008a) and Mikel Dufrenne’s theory on the aesthetic object as a perceived object (Dufrenne, 1973, 2001).