Abstract
The presentation explores how technology shapes and drives the evolution of audio reading practices. In digital reading, presence is increasingly distributed across overlapping forms of attention, each with varying levels of focus and intensity—a phenomenon Don Ihde (2012) describes as multistability. This paper examines the multistable perceptual space created through the interaction between audiobook interfaces, the contexts in which literature is listened to, and the movements of the human body during listening. It also raises the question of whether polyrhythm might serve as a useful metaphor for describing these interplays.
Bio
Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Culture at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. Her research interests fall within the fields of sound, literature, digital culture, reading, music, medialization, and phenomenological aspects of aesthetic experience. Furthermore, she focuses on the unique epistemological potential of sound with respect to how we sense and experience the world, and she has researched how sound is constituted and changed by the cultural discourses in which it operates.
Together with Iben Have, she founded the international, online journal SoundEffects. 2019-2023, PI of the project “Reading Between Media – Developing and Encouraging Children’s Multisensorial Reading in a Digital Age”, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. She is currently working as a Carlsberg Monograph fellow with the title “Rhythms of Reading” (2025-2026). Recent books include The Digital Audiobook: New Media, Users, and Experiences (Routledge, 2016), and The Digital Reading Condition (Routledge, 2023).