This article discusses the importance of active listening when engaging new audiences with experimental and unfamiliar musical formats. Spatial music is examined as a physically immersive medium in which the audience is implicated as an active component in the execution of its performance. A brief account of the historic context of spatial music will be presented alongside speculation for the trajectory of its future; particularly its potential as a model for audience engagement. This article will first consider how spatially immersive performances have the capacity to activate listeners and how can this help to engage new audiences with new ways of listening. It will also question the notion of inhabiting spatial music, with an investigation of the multiple ways in which spatial music relates to physical space and the terms of its inhabitation. The concept of virtual listening will be discussed in response to trends towards passive hearing, as driven by recent technological developments in acoustic software and hardware, and the resultant abstraction of the spatial and social dynamics of sound in virtual space. The physiological and psychological differences between listening and hearing will also be examined as a means of establishing fundamental differences in the ways that we interact with music, and questioning what our listening habits tell us about audience engagement in the context of experimental music performance. This article will also question the individual roles of the musician, composer, architect/designer and audience in the ongoing responsibility to improve audience engagement in new, or unfamiliar musical works. Importantly, this article will also explicitly examine who we are referring to when we use the term ‘new audiences’. Major developments in acoustic technology during the last few decades have somewhat confused the diagram between music, space and listener. The understanding of which elements are active and which are passive is especially ambiguous at a time when ambisonic and binaural technologies have become developed enough to provide accurate simulations of the abstract, acoustic qualities of spaces, but on virtual terms. Architects, composers, musicians, engineers and audiences are at a crossroads in the development of new music and experimental, spatiosonic practice. ‘Spatiosonic’ is a hybrid term which is used throughout this article to describe work and phenomena which regard space (spatio) and sound (sonic) as equal, interactive partners. This article considers some of the opportunities and limitations at stake in current techniques of composition, performance and listening.

中文翻译：

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激活观众：空间音乐如何帮助我们倾听

这篇文章讨论的重要性积极倾听当用实验性和不熟悉的音乐格式吸引新观众时。空间音乐被视为一种身临其境的媒介，观众在其中被视为执行其表演的积极组成部分。将简要介绍空间音乐的历史背景以及对其未来轨迹的推测；特别是它作为观众参与模式的潜力。本文将首先考虑空间沉浸式表演如何能够启用听众，以及这如何帮助以新的聆听方式吸引新听众。它还将质疑居住空间音乐的概念，调查空间音乐与物理空间及其居住条件的多种方式。虚拟聆听的概念将根据趋势进行讨论被动听力，由于声学软件和硬件的最新技术发展，以及由此产生的对虚拟空间中声音的空间和社会动态的抽象的推动。听力和听力之间的生理和心理差异也将作为确定我们与音乐互动方式的根本差异的一种手段，并质疑我们的聆听习惯告诉我们在实验音乐表演背景下观众参与的哪些方面。本文还将质疑音乐家、作曲家、建筑师/设计师和观众在提高观众对新的或不熟悉的音乐作品的参与度方面的持续责任。重要的是，本文还将明确检查我们在使用“新受众”一词时所指的对象。过去几十年声学技术的重大发展在某种程度上混淆了音乐、空间和听众之间的关系。在 Ambisonic 和双耳技术已经发展到足以提供对空间的抽象声学质量的准确模拟但在虚拟术语上的时代，对哪些元素是主动的，哪些是被动的理解尤其模棱两可。建筑师、作曲家、音乐家、工程师和观众正处于发展新音乐和实验性空间声学实践的十字路口。“空间声波”是一个混合术语，在本文中用于描述将空间（空间）和声音（声波）视为平等的互动伙伴的工作和现象。本文考虑了当前构图技术中的一些机会和限制，