[Commlist] new book: Silence, Sounds, Music. Acoustic Dimensions of Immersion

*New Book: *Silence, Sounds, Music. Acoustic Dimensions of Immersion. 
Edited By Florian Freitag, Laura Katharina Mücke, Peter Niedermüller. 
Routledge, 2025.

*DESCRIPTION:*

This book examines the intersections of silence with immersive arts and 
experiences. Silence and immersion may seem antithetical: while 
immersion is supposedly induced by acoustic and other stimuli, silence 
is commonly understood as the absence or opposite of sound. Since the 
eighteenth century, however, silence has been established as a 
multifarious and polyvalent cultural concept. Immersion, in turn, though 
often used as a simple "all-inclusive" term, has old and complex 
ontological and epistemological roots.

Organized into three parts, this book brings critical, historical, and 
theoretical debates on silence into dialogue with different notions of 
immersion. The 16 theoretical articles and case studies engage in 
discovering and questioning the continued prominence of both concepts in 
aesthetics, culture, and media. Covering music, film, digital, visual 
and performance art, theater, video games, and theme parks, the chapters 
discuss both highly canonical and rarely examined artifacts. Written by 
scholars from Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland, the 
interdisciplinary collection includes perspectives from musicology, film 
studies, cultural and media studies, gender studies, art history, and 
philosophy.

Silence, Sounds, Music addresses both an academic and a wider audience. 
It will be of interest to anyone interested in music, sound, immersive 
experiences, the so-called experience economy, and contemporary art and 
culture.

*CONTENTS:*

Introduction: On the Aesthetics, Politics, and Intersections of Silence, 
Sound, and Immersion
Florian Freitag, Laura Katharina Mücke, and Peter Niedermüller

Part I: Producing Silence
Dominic Zerhoch

1. Beyond Words: Auditive and Discursive Non-Normativity in Films of 
Urszula Antoniak
Tullio Richter-Hansen

2. Musical Immersion and Its Place of Silence
Fabian Kurze

3. Digital Movieloops
Anita Hafner

4. The Paradox of Musical Silence
Ioana Geanta

5. Silence as a Performative Means in Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is 
Present
Karolina Zgraja

6. The Residence Within: Silence, Immersion, and Contemplative Play in 
Videogames
Damien Schlarb

Part II: On the Cusp between Sound and Silence
Helena Rapp and Elisabeth Sommerlad

7. The Shock of Silence: An Apporach to Philosophical Immersion in Media
Sebastian R. Richter

8. Moments of Silence in Life is Strange: Flow, Immersion, and 
Involvement as as Result of Lack of Gameplay
Michael Mosel

9. In the Eye of the Hurricane: How Silent Moments in The Big Short 
(2015) and Money Monster (2016) Configure Empathetic and Immersive 
Processes of Film Reception
Dieter Merlin

10. Broken Times of Silence: Choreographing Time in Once Upon a Time in 
the West
Saori Kanemaki

11. The Birth of the Talkies out of the Spirit of Silence: Alan 
Crossland’s The Jazz Singer (1927)
Heinz Hiebler

Part III: Reception, Context, Space
Helena Rapp and Elisabeth Sommerlad

12. The Politics of Silence in Theater and Cinema
Laura Katharina Mücke and Patric Blaser

13. The Delightful Paradox: Towards an Aesthetics of Silence in Early 
Sound Films
Daniel Wiegand

14. Empty Times: Melodic Hardcore Punk and the Problem of Immersion
Clemens Spahr

15. The Depth of the Sea, the Depth of Listening, and the Figure of 
Isolde as Avatar
Gabriela Lendle

16. The Sounds of Magic: Silence, Sounds, and Immersion in Theme Parks
Florian Freitag

*EDITORS:*
Florian Freitag has been a professor of American Studies at the 
University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) since 2019.

Laura Katharina Mücke is a research assistant in the area “Everyday 
Media and Digital Cultures” at the Department for Film, Theater, Media 
and Cultural Studies at the University of Mainz.

Peter Niedermüller has been an interim professor at Johannes Gutenberg 
University Mainz (Germany) and at the University of Music and Performing 
Arts in Mannheim (Germany).

*RELEVANT WEBLINKS:*

More information about the book and order links:
https://www.routledge.com/Silence-Sounds-Music-Acoustic-Dimensions-of-Immersion/Freitag-Mucke-Niedermuller/p/book/9781032112602?srsltid=AfmBOop_mlcX2DBjfGuSelej9M1-Yi6OuxneumIqHu6bhLWyHH7JyUv9 



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