Autisme et médiation thérapeutique musicale immersive : l’espace comme composante du timbre

Objectives

The aim of this article is to highlight the clinical effects of an immersive music device used as a therapeutic mediator with autistic children. As musical immersion is based on the hypothesis that space is a component of timbre, the aim is to bring together in a novel way two major problematic issues in autism: space and voice. To do this, post-Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical references are mobilized and discussed.

Method

After a technical presentation of the immersive device and an explanation of the spatial and aesthetic characteristics of the works played on it, the authors describe the clinical case of an 11-year-old autistic child and identify the different stages of the relationship. The initially observed effects of containment were quickly limited, and the child almost rejected the system. It was only during a work based on different spatializations of a voice that the child was able to reengage with the device and with the relationship with the caregiver as “a double,” going so far as to invent games that included him. To shed light on the subjectivizing effects of these sessions, the authors first recall the specific relationship that the autistic subject has with the voice as an “a object,” relying in particular on the notion of “delocalization of the voice,” which is active in all devices for distancing the timbre, the latter being understood as one of the names of the Real of the voice. The article goes on to describe in detail the spatial characteristics of the work to which the child was so sensitive in renewing his relationship with the other. After analysis, the work in question turns out to be composed not of a single unified or unifying space, but of several sound spaces, sometimes broadcast simultaneously.

Results

The notion of the delocalization of the voice is then confronted with the fact that the work of immersive music can offer much more than a simple point of delocalization of the voice in the same space: it offers the experience of several simultaneous sound spaces, which we call a “delocalization of the delocalization of the voice,” making it possible to relieve the autistic subject of what Lacan called the “real weight of the subject” implied by the voice object.

Discussion

The article raises several points for discussion: firstly, immersive musical works should not be considered as recreating a realistic sound environment (of the virtual reality type), but rather as proposing impossible sound spaces. In this respect, there are both aesthetic and ethical issues at stake in the clinical use that can be made of these immersive musical devices. Moreover, the construction of autistic space is not just a matter of the gaze but also of the voice in its impulsive dimension. Finally, the “delocalization of the delocalization” of the voice would enable the autistic subject to experience the atopic part of it, i.e. its impossible localization. Space is thus constructed around an atopic point.

Conclusions

The article seeks to demonstrate how the clinical use of therapeutic mediation through art can intersect with current research in electroacoustic composition, making it possible to revive theoretical and clinical questions about both space and voice. The immersive dimension is thus considered from both a musical and a transferential perspective.