Sound installation & self-listening

This thesis is an exploration of listening behaviours in the context of sound installation art. A concept of self-listening is developed by the author to describe behaviours that direct the listener's attention towards him- or herself. The concept is derived from an investigation of a common thread found in diverse areas including: acousmatic music, acoustic ecology, cinema studies, phenomenology, the visual arts, psychoanalysis, literature and myth. Self-listening is used to analyse and evaluate seven works of sound installation which form the corpus of creative work by the author. The concept is also presented to contribute more generally towards an aesthetic understanding of other sound installations and other compositional forms beyond the documented projects. The author's sound installations include both gallery and outdoor projects and use diverse technologies. Spanning a period of a decade and a half, they include: The Talking Chair, Squeezebox, Sound Mapping, Close, Summoned Voices, Zhong Shuo and a work in progress entitled O Espelho. The various self-listening behaviours are shown to have ontological significance through their expression in the author's individual installation projects.