SHOCK CORRIDOR
This article will build upon research presented on Theatrical Latency: Walking Katrina Palmer’s The Loss Adjusters in the Theatre and Performance Design Journal, London: Routledge. May 2016 and the practice research conducted as part of the Shock Corridor residency (above) to further the concepts and methods of sound design in immersive storytelling. The notion of ‘sonic theatricality’ will be drawn from how artists and sound designers utalise theatrical effects, such as delays, reverbs, modulated ambience, distortion and auto tune. In this configuration, theatricality works as an affect, existing at the level of sonic materiality that transforms voices and sounds into different entities and ambiences, increasing scale, timbre and pitch or, for example, making machines sound human or humans sound like machines. Furthermore, the theatricality of sound representation will be considered through techniques such as foley sound effects as used by Lawrence Abu Hamden in Earwitness Inventory (2018 - ongoing) to theatrically map spaces and events of trauma in the contexts of audio investigations into restrictive asylum policies in Europe and state violence in Syria and Palestine/Israel.