Aural Diverse Spatial Perception: From Paracusis to Panacusis Loci

Human biology and allied fields have a tendency to presuppose a multimodal subject who intuits space predominantly via binocular vision. This sensual-spatial hierarchy, with fractional input from the other senses including hearing, touch, balance, and proprioception, offer discreet spatial information to help reaffirm the visual scene. Flipping this paradigm, this chapter presents an unabashed (re)prioritisation of the sense of hearing vis-à-vis spatial acuity. Significantly, deviating from the standard auraltypical textbook’s positing of a perfectly calibrated pair of symmetrical ears positioned at the sides of the cranium – a normative model that has been ineluctably inscribed into our audio technologies and the fabric of environments we have fashioned and inhabit, informing who gets to hear what: signal, noise, ambience ¬– this chapter will offer a fuller account of spatial hearing within the frame of the nascent discourse of auraldiversity (Drever 2017; Drever & Hugill 2022). Encompassing impairment theory, auraldiversity considers limitations such as asymmetrical hearing and goes beyond, incorporating spatial hearing that exceeds the prescribed normative model, such as echolocation, hyperlocalisation and the boundless space of the imagination. Finally, the chapter demonstrates the pressing need to learn from those with sensory impairment who require optimal context specific acoustics and sound design to support spatial awareness.