Rethinking Immersive Sound Design: A Fourfold Model of Emergent Spatial Perception

This paper introduces a fourfold model of emergent spatial perception that addresses a gap in spatial-audio discourse, which often privileges localization, simulation fidelity, and acoustic realism while overlooking interpretive, affective, and symbolic dimensions of experience. Grounded in Grimshaw and Garner’s account of the sonic aggregate and adapting Harman’s distinction between sensual and real objects, the model specifies how spatial meaning emerges through layered perceptual engagement. It is organized as a quadrant defined by two intersecting perceptual axes: sensual versus real, and exophenomenal versus endophenomenal. Their intersection yields four perceptual fields-material, aesthetic, lived, and symbolic-that together show how spatial meaning develops through sound, spanning physical infrastructure, sensory presence, personal resonance, and cultural framing. Read through a hermeneutic cycle, the model treats perception as an ongoing negotiation rather than a linear pipeline from signal to interpretation. Applied to immersive sound design, it informs perceptual framing, compositional decision-making, and reflexive evaluation. Crossformat examples from audio drama and a museum installation show that immersion is not format-dependent but follows from how perceptual engagement is composed across the four fields. Although grounded in auditory practice, the framework is modality-agnostic and offers a portable vocabulary for analysis and design wherever space becomes meaningful in experience.