The Spatial Construction of Musical Body and Its Sense of Place: A Case Study of Musical Bodies at Lu-Ming Square

In 1969, Raymond Murray Schafer developed an idea, soundscape, which is the first concept on sounds in our living environment in musicological field. Steven Feld’s “acoustemology” and Bruce R. Smith’s “an ecology based on listening” continued to discuss the meanings and influences of sounds in environment to human’s life and thinking. his thesis takes on a different path to investigate the relationship among musical sounds, human sensations, and the environment. Based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception,” this thesis takes “bodily space” produced by body perception and body movement as the foundation connecting musical sounds and environment. hrough fieldwork at NTU’s Lu-Ming square and Shi-da park, the author found out that a body actively make relationship with objects in the process of movement to extend or reorder it’s musical body image, then construct it’s musical bodily space which represents body’s active comprehension of environment. The musical bodily space’s reliance to environment and body’s response to spatial and temporal characters of the environment thus construct musical sense of place together. Comparing Lu-Ming square and Shi-da park by musical sense of place, the author found out that the differences of two are not only from objective aspect, but also from the result of interaction of musical bodily space and environment.