Sound design as human matter interaction

Recently, terms like material computation or natural computing in foundations of computer science and engineering, and new materiality in cultural studies signal a broader turn to conceptions of the world that are not based on solely human categories. While respecting the values of human-centered design, how can we begin to think about the design of responsive environments and computational media while paying as much attention to material qualities like elasticity, density, wear, and tension as to social and cognitive phenomena? This question understands computation as a potential property of matter in a non-reductive way that plausibly spans formal divides between symbolic-semiotic, social, and physical processes. Full investigation greatly exceeds one brief paper. But we open this question in the concrete practices of computational sound and sound design.