Communicative Musicality, Learning and Energy: A Holographic Analysis of Sound Online and in the Classroom

The sonic environment of learning presents an opportunity to study the space of social relations as energetic dynamics. Like all communication, sound requires energy both to create and to process. In recent years, the field of ‘communicative musicality’ — an interdisciplinary field connecting ethology, sociology, and psychology — examines social relations in their sonic context. Analysing the sonic environment has become more important (and more feasible) with increasing activities online during the pandemic. We present a comparative analysis of the sonic environment considering the sonic differences between face-to-face encounters, Zoom lectures, and online gaming. Our analysis measures the Shannon entropy of Fourier transforms of the sound spectrum to produce fractal representations of sonic episodes from contrasting educational situations. We consider how these fractals connect the physics of the environment with physiology of individuals observing and acting with each other in techno-educational contexts. As an index of the ‘between-ness’ of observing systems, our analysis points to a correlation between the coherence of patterning in sound and learning experiences. With its focus on social relations and technology’s environmental effects, this analysis well-suits postdigital concerns for the contingencies and uncertainties surrounding socio-technical systems in education.