This article points to the long-standing and significant role that the sound interface plays in shaping the ways we attend to media by considering its phatic function. Employing a reverse engineering approach, the article consists of an analysis of historical transformations in the regimen of attention produced by sound media to date, followed by discourse analyses of scientific and industry communities of digital sound interface design. Introducing the term “phatic alignment” to describe how media and humans are arranged in space and adjusted to communicate with one another, this article points to the increasing hold of the digital sound interface over the user’s attention and identifies the premises affording this trend. The article argues that in abstracting the human ear as an automated “phatic threshold” that regulates the user’s attention, digital sound interface design situates the user in constant attentiveness to media and sets the stage for next-generation communication technologies.

This article explores the relationship between psychotherapy and sound reproduction technologies from the early 20th century to the present. Subscribing to a media genealogy approach, it traces the changing status of the recorded voice in therapy as set against broader transformations in the field of mental health. Delving into the recorded voice’s diverse applications across psychotherapeutic approaches, it demonstrates how technology worked to unravel the temporal and spatial formations of the therapeutic setting, thereby unsettling established hierarchies, terminologies, and techniques while at the same time supporting the integrity of the therapeutic situation. The article points to sound media’s capacity to bifurcate the voice into somatic and expressive elements and reassemble them in various configurations, thereby producing the ‘psyche’ through alternative access points. The story of the recorded voice in therapy provides a glimpse into the way technological affordances inform therapeutic concepts and practices, which in turn implement technology in study, training, and treatment.

No abstract