Racism and the Representation of the Murder of Stephen Lawrence in Audio: An Analysis of Audience Experience of the Immersive Story Environment

This article investigates audio as a storytelling medium and its capacity to provide immersive story experiences, examining the potential of immersive or spatialised audio to engage young people with the complex and pressing issue of racism. It focuses on the artwork [re]locate, a multi-channel audio installation revisiting the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. [re]locate places members of the audience at the bus stop where Stephen Lawrence was attacked, and allows them to experience an audio-only reconstruction of events associated with the murder. Based on a thematic analysis of the qualitative feedback elicited after encounters with the artwork, the article seeks to understand young people’s perspectives on events, their sense of engagement with the story, and the aesthetic and technical features of the installation that create a sense of immersion, and induce presence. It argues that the perceived potency of the artwork, and its ability to engage young people not only resides in the inherent qualities of sound, but also in the capacity of spatialised audio design to heighten the sense of immersion, induce presence and enhance cognitive and emotional perspective taking.