Sound, Embodiment, and the Experience of Interactivity in Video Games & Virtual Environments, presented by Lori Landay, Professor of Cultural Studies at Berklee College of Music, at SCMS 2013. http://www.lorilanday.com/sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1oB9kMg0do&list=PLEnae7GogtYvFt4Mj8sMcurlproykzsd0

1. Lori Landay
Professor of Cultural Studies
Berklee College of Music
SCMS13

2. Innovative
sound can
bridge the
gaps between
the physical
body,
represented
body, and
imagined
body in video
games.

3. Do you feel the wind? Where? Why?
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Battle of Gay Tony
Rockstar North, 2009

4. Do you feel the wind? Where? Why?
Flower, thatgamecompany, 2009

5. Walter Murch’s aural spectrum
http://transom.org/?page_id=7006

6. unified sound, image, action in a virtual environment
Char Davies, Osmose (1994-96)

7. LIMBO, Playdead, 2010

8. GAPS BETWEEN
the physical body of the player,
the screen body represented on the screen,
perhaps by an avatar, and
the imagined body comprised of the mental image
and nonconscious sensory-motor processes of
the physical body and also the virtual body
Sound has the potential to bridge the points of
disconnection among these embodiment perspectives in a
way that image and action cannot.

9. Sound effects & music in Portal 2
sound of soaring through the air after bouncing on “Aerial
Faith Plate,” a sound effect that can be better understood
as a musical event than a diegetic sound
Dan Bruno http://cruiseelroy.net/2011/06/portal-2-music/

10. Speech as sound effects in Portal 2

11. Portal 2, Valve, 2011

12. “Technology mirrors our desires;
interactive technologies, in
particular, reflect our desire to
feel engaged.”
David Rokeby, “Transforming Mirrors:
Subjectivity and Control in Interactive
Media,” 1996