Tag: sound

Media ArchaeologyResearchWorking Notes

Synthesizer-Videogame Mashups

by Aurelio Meza The showcase video Super Mario Spacetime Organ (illucia & Soundscape) by Chris Novello starts asking, “What is a video game?” We could expand the scope of this speculation and ask, “What is an instrument?” (Georgina Born and Joe Snape finish an article on MaxMSP exactly with that question). These two interrogations bring together Max, customized instruments, and video games into the discussion of devices and instrumentality. How devices are operated through a physical interface is central to this discussion. Game controllers, just like piano or computer keyboards, can be defined as boundary objects (after Susan Leigh Star)–surfaces of interaction between an instrument and its user (here I’m using the notion of instrument in a very broad sense)....

/ August 3, 2016
Media ArchaeologyWorking Notes

Sounds and videogames

By Aurelio Meza Through a basic search on Google and Worldcat I came across an article on chiptune music by Israel Márquez (curiously, it’s in Spanish, meaning there seems to be an interest in this movement in Spanish-speaking academia), as well as a book called Playing with sounds: a theory of interacting with sound and music in video games by Karen Collins. That sounds more like my field of interest, but I’m afraid I won’t finish the book before the course ends. Tomorrow I’ll have a look at these texts, but for the time being I can start exploring some of the topics suggested by Darren, Stephanie, and Patrick. First, there’s the consideration about indexical association (one of the main...

/ August 1, 2016