Budhaditya Chattopadhyay Knihy

The book systematically explores film sound in the Indian subcontinent, addressing a scholarly gap in the study of sound and listening within Global South cultures. It examines the evolution of sound in Indian film, from early recordings to modern digital technologies, and incorporates a practice-based methodology based on the author's experiences and dialogues with prominent sound practitioners. By highlighting the interplay of tradition and modernity, it offers significant insights into film history, sound, and media studies, emphasizing a new social and spatial awareness in audiovisual production.

Focusing on the sound practices of the Global South, this book employs auto-ethnographic conversations with sound practitioners from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. It explores intricate sonic processes and cultural systems, moving away from Eurocentric sound studies. The conversations are complemented by scholarly commentaries on aural cultures and sound theory, revealing a tension between colonial consumerism and the practitioners' desire for authentic expression through their art. This work emphasizes the importance of understanding sound as a complex cultural and aesthetic system.

The Auditory Setting introduces and investigates how narrative and a sense of place are constructed in film and media arts through the reproduction and mediation of site-specific environmental sounds, or 'ambience'. Although this sonic backdrop acts as the acoustically mediated space where a story or event can take place, there has been little academic study of sound's undervalued role in cinematic setting and production. Drawing on theories of narrative, diegesis, mimesis and presence, and following a varied number of relevant audio-visual works, this book is a ground-breaking exploration of human agency in mediating environmental sounds and the nature of the sonic experience in the Anthropocene. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is an award-winning media artist, researcher and writer, and holds a PhD in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University.