During the theoretical preparation for BRECVEMA-informed Suite, the most central group of readings came from the field of music psychology. Among them, the study by Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) had a particularly significant impact on the conceptual foundation of this project. In their paper, they argue that emotional responses to music are not produced through a single mechanism, but through multiple psychological processes that operate independently yet can be activated simultaneously. This argument breaks away from the long-standing “unitary reaction model” that once dominated the study of musical emotion, and it provides a highly technical structural basis for my work.

For instance, the Brain Stem Reflex represents the most direct and physiological response to auditory stimuli: intense bursts of noise, sudden high frequencies, or abrupt changes can immediately trigger heightened alertness. Rhythmic Entrainment, on the other hand, relates to bodily synchronization; it highlights how rhythmic patterns guide motor tendencies or internal bodily rhythms. Juslin’s clear differentiation of these mechanisms allows me to avoid a “generalized emotional design” in composition, focusing instead on how each musical movement can precisely target its intended psychological process.

Tan et al. (2010) also discuss the interaction between auditory perception and other sensory modalities, which inspired my later considerations regarding spatial design and multilayered structures. They emphasise that musical experience is often a cross-modal integrative process, in which visual cues, tactile sensations, and even motor intentions influence how sound is interpreted. This directly shaped my conceptual approach to the “Visual Imagery” movement: rather than constructing a narrative soundscape to “tell a story,” I use minimal sound cues to prompt the listener to actively complete the imagery themselves, making imagination a central component of emotional formation.

On a cross-cultural level, the research of Balkwill and Thompson (1999) into how listeners from different cultural backgrounds perceive musical emotion made me realise that emotional response is not entirely universal; it is partly shaped and encoded by cultural systems. For example, certain interval patterns, rhythmic gestures, or acoustic qualities considered “sad” or “tense” within Western frameworks do not necessarily carry the same emotional meaning elsewhere. This insight reminds me to avoid relying on a single aesthetic system when selecting materials, and it also explains why the reference list for this project includes sound studies from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In addition, Ahmed’s (2004) theory of the cultural politics of emotion proposes that emotions function as an “orientation,” determining how we move toward or away from certain objects. This perspective is especially meaningful for the design of the Evaluative Conditioning movement. It suggests that emotion is fundamentally relational: a sound source is not inherently emotional but gains affective meaning through repeated associations and accumulated encounters.