Welcome to the world of wandercast: Podcast as participatory performance and environmental exploration

Abstract

Wilson reveals the value of the podcast medium when rendered both as a mode of participatory performance, or performative audio, and as a research tool. The chapter shines new light on traditional podcast forms by considering examples that operate at the fringes of the medium. Using his own creation, Wandercast, as a model—in comparison with other notable examples—Wilson explores how performative podcasts employ the portability and aural intimacy of the medium to invite dynamic interaction between listener and environment. When listeners engage with these artworks, Wilson argues, new modes of perceiving, performing, and being can result. Wilson’s analysis uses ecological and phenomenological lenses in combination. Together, they foreground performative podcasts’ capacity to both exemplify perceptual processes and recalibrate listeners’ relationships with their environments.