Hi Kerstin. It doesn't directly relate to narration, but here is a study on natural sounds and how they impact our mood: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/eco.2014.0028

Thanks a lot, that is helpful too.

Check the book "In the blink of an eye" by Walter Murch, it talks about film editing and the human natural experience. Phillip Tagg has explorations that may be useful for you: http://tagg.org/articles/virrat.html (about the relation of soundscape and human experience) and basicly a proposal for a musical semiology http://tagg.org/articles/trento91.html. Whatever you need don´t hesitate on writing :) i´ve been working this subjects for a while and even though there are no specfific texts (regarding nature and narrative) i´ve developed a conceptual framework that allows me to analyze and explain this practices... also you should check texts regarding film mimesis (not diegesis). (sorry for the writing, i´m kind of in a rush but didn´t want to miss answering)

Thanks a lot - Blink of an Eye I do know,

you knwo - I am a filmmaker and a dramaturg myself and interested in more substantial reflection on it - and if not given I'll send out a call for paper for an anthology in my series at Peter Lang. Wanted to make sure before not to have missed relevant publications.

Oh, I see, sorry about that, thought it was in a more basic level. Well, at least regarding sound and music I recommend Tagg and also Raymond Monelle's texts on Musical topics (similar to literary tropes). On the other hand check the following, maybe they consider some of the things you're interested in for the call for papers:

Ryan, M.-L. (2003). On Defining Narrative Media. Image [&] Narrative. Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative, #6 Medium theory. Retrieved from http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/mediumtheory/marielaureryan.htm

Herman, D. (2009). Cognitive approaches to narrative analysis. In G. Brône & J. Vandaele (Eds.), Cognitive poetics: goals, gains and gaps (pp. 79–118). Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000b). Introduction: Multiliteracies: the beginnings of an idea. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 3–8). London ; New York: Routledge.

Check "intermodal translation" in Doloughan, F. J. (2011). Contemporary narrative. Textual production, multimodality and multiliteracies. London; New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=368509

Hope I helped. I absolutely agree there's a need for a more substantial approach.

Thanks a lot!

Tadanobu Tsunoda (e.g. 1975) using data on the identification of sounds presented monaurally to both ears, claims that the Japanese, unlike speakers of Indo-European languages process natural sounds such as of insects (e.g. circada) with the left hemisphere that is usually associated with language processing. He claims that this is due to Japanese attentiveness to nature and the characteristics of the vowels in Japanese and other East Asian/Pacific languages.

His research was dismissed as pseudo science by many, but with the recent boom in research into cognitive styles (e.g. Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), and recent research into culture and the brain (e.g. Kitayama & Uskul, 2011), his research may come under reappraisal.

As noted Tsunoda found that natural sounds such as those of insects (and music) were processed more effectively by the left brain which is more generally associated with linguistic processing. He concluded that the Japanese were hearing nature speak to them. However, other research has suggested that the Japanese thought processes are disrupted, as opposed to enhanced, by phonetic speech (Kim, 2002), that the phonetic word content is less important that vocal tone (Ishii, Reyes, & Kitayama, 2003), and Japanese thought may be particularly visual in nature (Takemoto and Brinthaupt, in preparation).  So it may be the case that rather than that insects are speaking to the Japanese, both the cacophony of circada and phonetic speech are not speaking to the Japanese for whom phonemes are sound and fury signifying very little. 

On the contrary the Japanese, due to the visual nature of the culture and the use of Sino-Japanese characters which (unlike their Chinese counterparts) are not associated with single phonemes, may do more of their symbolic processing in the visual, right hemisphere. Or again put another way it is not that insect sounds processing have swapped to the language hemisphere but that language processing may have swapped to the visual hemisphere - as may also be the case with speakers of sign languages.

This view is supported by the fact that circada create a brain numbing cacophony, as suggested by the famous Haiku by Matsuo Basho

静けさや岩に染み入る蝉の声

silence - the screams of cicadas seeps into the rocks, and that traditional Japanese music such as Gagaku and Kagura Uta tends to be of a less symbolic  (compared to Bach say) more directly emotive or atmospheric variety.

Kim, H. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Kitayama, S., & Uskul, A. K. (2011). Culture, mind, and the brain: Current evidence and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 419–449. Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145357

Ishii, K., Reyes, J. A., & Kitayama, S. (2003). Spontaneous Attention to Word Content Versus Emotional Tone. Psychological Science, 39–46. Retrieved from http://php.scripts.psu.edu/users/n/x/nxy906/COMPS/indivdualismandcollectivism/culture%20lit/to%20print/Kitayma2003threecultures.pdf

Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 922. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/81/5/922/

Tsunoda, T. (1975). Functional differences between right-and left-cerebral hemispheres detected by the key-tapping method. Brain and Language, 2, 152–170. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X75800617

That is great help, thanks!

See Shoma A. Chatterji's (1999)  "The Culture-specific Use of Sound in the Indian Cinema". The article explores how sounds such as those of heartbeats, thundering rain, singing nightingale, (silence) and environmental noise are used to express emotion not representable by audiovisual effects in the Hindi film. 

Hi Kerstin Dorothea, this is a very interesting topic.

I can suggest you some works and/or some authors about, but the relation you ask for lays inside their works, in some of them.

About that I found really interesting in 'A l'écoute de l'environnement: Répertoire des effets sonores', by Jean Francois Augoyard and Henry Togrue (I don't read French, so I've read it in the Italian edition, but probably there will be even an English one). The narrativization is intended by different perspectives, put together by the fact that they are aesthetic perspectives. The 'story' is the listener's story, passing through several environments, especially in cities, it is an experience.

Instead, by a poietic point of view, a musical one, there is the work of all the French Spectralism: try Gérard Grisey's Vortex Temporum, or the work of Fausto Romitelli, specially about repetition, distortion and transition. In his latest works his research is very clear: try Audiodrome, for example, but all 2000's music of Romitelli works on that. And about Grisey and Vortex Temporum, there is a dance piece by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (Rosas dance company, Bruxelles, http://rosas.be), build on it, and an booklet about her (and Bojana Cvejić's) research on that, somewere. Ask Rosas, o I send you mine...

In general, fucusing on visuals (not a/v), Roger Caillois wrote something maybe redundant, but interesting, in his Malversations, about stones, signs and alphabets.

And Jean Jacques Nattiez, of course, on narrativization, can be an author to follow, but his analisys returns an other time on the aestethic/listener side.

Anyhow, I hope this can help you, let us know.

An other thing about Grisey, and it should be the first I added to the list, yesterday, well matching your request and present here in this net:

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/270282905_The_spectralism_of_Gerard_Grisey_from_the_nature_of_the_sound_to_the_nature_of_listening

by Justyna Humięcka-Jakubowska

Sorry for that delay (and for the global one).

Have a nice evening

Article The spectralism of Gérard Grisey: from the nature of the sou...