Guest Contribution by Rob Bridgett For the past 14 years I've been a proponent of sound as a deeply integral part of the video game development process, getting audio involved earlier, allowing it to become a part of decision making and concepting, allowing sound's early presence, excitement and enthusiasm to influence the other disciplines involved in the … [Read more...]
Silence is the Sound of Listening
"One can look at seeing but one can't hear hearing" - Marcel Duchamp As you may know, silence is the topic chosen for this month here at Designing Sound. One may think silence is not existent if we value it as an absolute sonic absence, but here I'm going to examine its role and possibility towards the act of listening to sound, silencing, not as that state of complete sonic … [Read more...]
AudioGaming : Competition
AudioGaming is about to celebrate five years of developing procedural audio plugin magic and would like to offer two DS readers a post-production bundle each — for free — through a simple competition. Here's what you need to do: Help them find a quote for the procedural audio plugin bundle A quote that could go on a box like the one below The quote needs to be ten … [Read more...]
The Negative Space of Sound
Guest Contribution by Jeff Talman Seong Moy, my drawing professor at City College of New York, had students lightly shade their sketchpads with hand-smeared charcoal to prepare a background for the drawing. This neutral background helped to create an illusory sense of depth in a 2-dimensional medium. The negative space of the drawing was activated by this treatment. Had there … [Read more...]
The Story in Surround – Game narrative and sound
I recently came across the Frictional Games blog and have spent the last few weeks trawling through it’s archive. It provides a wealth of informaiton on game design, and in particular discussions on the point of game narrative. One particular post, 4 Layers, a narrative design approach, written by Thomas Grip, Frictional's creative director, raised the concept of the mental … [Read more...]
A Moment (Month) of Silence
Anechoic chambers aren't necessarily "silent," but what other image can you actually use to represent the subject. The nature of silence, like nearly every other aspect of sound, is truly a subjective idea, because true Silence...the complete absence of sound...is impossible to experience unless one has a medical condition which induces it. [If you want to get solipsistic, we … [Read more...]
Art of Surround
Acousmonium, INA-GRM, 1980. Photo by Laszlo Ruska. Surround (Oxford Dictionary) (verb) [with object] - Be all round (someone or something) (noun) - A thing that forms a border or edging around an object. (adjective) (Surrounding) - All around a particular place or thing. Based merely on a technological approach, one might think that Surround sound is just the … [Read more...]