Halo and Music

The following study is concerned with how immersive experiences are constructed in first-person shooter (FPS) video games through the implementation of “realistic” audio. Bringing together the three fields of video game studies, sound studies, and science and technology studies in its theoretical framework, this study approaches FPS games as commodities, marketed for their capabilities towards providing the player with an immersive and realistic experience, and constructed in particular ways, for particular ends. The first part of this study explores the context of FPS game audio development, from the earliest days of video games in the mid-twentieth century, to the current day. It is argued that the history of FPS games is tightly coupled with the innovation of particular audio reproduction technologies, with the greater history of representation across forms of media, and on a trajectory towards increased immersive realism. The aesthetics of realism as presented in war cinema are taken as a fundamental influence for how immersive and realistic auditory experiences are constructed for contemporary FPS players. The second part of this study takes four FPS games and formally describes them in terms of how the player is positioned as a subject via the game and platform’s audio affordances and disaffordances. Finally, both sections are brought to bear on one another in a diachronic account of how subjects have been (re)positioned via game audio throughout the history of the FPS. Merging these threads, ultimately this study argues that the player-subject of FPS games has been aurally (re)positioned on a trajectory shared with the refinement of audio reproduction technologies towards greater immersive realism. Technological development and the aesthetics of realism, as well as the evolution of FPS games into competitive multiplayer formats, have been mutually influential in this, one necessitating the other in a constant cycle of refinement and occasional decline.

For several years audiovisual analysis has been a growth area in musicology and cultural studies. And yet, very little has been published that recognises its relevance to a wide range of practices, including music videos, film and television music, video art, and gaming music. A thread that runs through the chapters is the recognition of audiovisual performance as a central theoretical category. The focus of the essays is exclusively contemporary. In this way, the book addresses a cluster of concerns that pertain to audiovisual production, performance and consumption in a variety of present day contexts. Chapters are organised thematically around the headings Avant-garde aesthetics, Re-sounding soundtracks, Televisual intertexts, Interrogating the mainstream, and Personal politics and embodied performance. What we attempt to put forward in this book is not a solution to the analysis of sound and vision, but rather, a list of possibilities and approaches through which interpretation can be undertaken. Thus, the essays collected provide critical readings through which the authors provide answers to questions, such as what is the relationship between sound and vision? And what is music's potential for communicating meaning into understanding?

2007

Musicology Research, 2017

With the recent publication of the edited collection Brian Eno: Oblique Music (Albiez & Pattie, 2016) and the distribution of Brian Eno’s 26th solo studio album Reflection in 2017 on vinyl, CD and as an innovative software application, the time is ripe for a reconsideration of the way in which software has been used by the musician, composer, record producer and visual artist Brian Eno. This paper explores how Eno has used simple but innovative ideas and processes to inform his music over the course of his career, and considers how his work with collaborators – specifically the musician and software designer Peter Chilvers – has converged with the emergence of touchscreen technologies and modes of distribution. We will demonstrate how Apple’s App Store global distribution platform has further disseminated Eno’s ideas of ‘generative music’ to a wider audience through he and Chilvers’ Bloom (2008), Trope (2009/2015), Scape (2012) and Reflection (2017a) software applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and the impact on the distribution and reception of Eno’s own music. Echoing Eno’s own processes of appropriation, remix and collaboration the authors wrote the paper through exchanges dictated by the turn of a card selected from the third edition of the Oblique Strategies deck, issued by Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1979.

Synesthetic interfaces—interfaces that enact a sensory substitution by translating information normally accessed through one sense modality into the phenomenal forms associated with another—constitute a fascinating and little-theorized corner of videogame UI design. Frustrating the distinctions laid out in dichotomies of "diegetic" versus "non-diegetic" UI elements, or "ecological" versus "emphatic" elements, synesthetic interfaces have been poorly served by the terminological frameworks that have typically dominated discussions of the functional and fictional status of game UI. This paper examines two employments of synesthetic interfaces—to communicate human perceptual expertise, and to depict the experience of nonhuman organisms—as a way of illuminating aspects of synesthetic interfaces that evade more terminologically rigid approaches.

11th International Philosophy of Computer Games Conference , 2017

This paper aims to discuss the ontological status of digital game players’ musical activities. Although in specific cases digital game play appears to be comparable to other musical forms of actions, for instance in the case of so-called music games, its complexities make for a variety of challenging cases. In fact, digital games engage with musical content in widely different ways, often affording players the possibility to interact with music. Popular examples of that are music games such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, in which players act in musical performances that have been defined as schizophonic (Miller, 2009, 2012). In these cases, original compositions and ad-hoc peripherals are provided to mimic emblematic musical actions of rock performers. However, digital games that are arguably not primarily focused on music seem to involve degrees of musical action, too. For example, player’s activities affect the playback of music compositions in the cases of dynamic and adaptive music (Collins, 2008), commonly present in very different digital game genres. Moreover, it has been observed that procedural music “evolves in real time according to specific sets of rules” (Collins, 2009) in reaction to player’s inputs, further complicating the musical status of player’s actions. A similar occurrence has been noted in relation to the notion of diegesis. Imported from film studies, diegesis has been adapted in different ways to digital games. This has brought to analyses of players’ action in relation to their diegetic placement (Collins, 2008; Grimshaw & Schott, 2007; Jørgensen, 2007). For instance, a player can act within the diegetic space following extradiegetic musical cues such as “background music”, short-circuiting the clear cut distinction of diegetic space (Jørgensen, 2007). According to these diverse examples, player’s actions have often meaning in a musical sense. Players, willingly or less so, control parts of musical content, juxtaposing them during gameplay. What are the musical actions of players? What is the ontological status of such interactions? In other words, what is the relationship in between digital game players musical activities and those of instrumentalists, conductors, listeners, or any other kind of musical performer? To answer these questions, this paper will look into resources ranging from philosophy of music, to musicology and ethnomusicology. In fact, the analysis of musical action is already well debated within these fields. Several key references in this regard consider musical actions, such as improvisation, as an under-researched kind of musical activities, with the bulk of attention mostly devoted to analyses of musical works. As such, the dichotomy in between musical work and music-as-action assumes central role. According to Alperson, “Anglophone philosophy of music [...] has seen music as an aesthetic practice centered on the creation of objects - musical works of art” (2018). His concern is clearly shared by Small, who criticise musicology for its tendency to equal “music” with “musical work” (1998). Instead, he argues that music should be understood as a range of activities: "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing" (Small, 1998). These actions, and more, are to be considered “musicking”. This paper therefore argues that digital game players often act in ways that are musically meaningful, whether the musical action in question is more or less self-standing (such as in music games) or it is connected to other in-game actions. The concept of “playing” - ideally, the quintessential action of the game player - has already been considered as a broad umbrella term, which cannot accurately describe the diverse actions players perform, such as labor-like activities (Calleja, 2011). This paper explores the musical side of the spectrum of actions afforded by digital games, by providing an initial overview of the musical facets of game playing. To do that, the paper inscribes the ontological status of digital game playing within the ongoing research on musicking and musical performances.

This paper examines the aesthetic and connective properties of arcade videogame interfaces. It considers the arcade videogame interface as a communicative and creative link that extends beyond play orientated input and feedback mechanisms. With the correct emulation and homebrew tools, videogame platforms that were originally designed as consumer only devices become malleable forms that can be interfaced at artist and developer levels, allowing previously closed hardware and software systems to function as reconfigurable digital materials.

2013

"Multimedia Collaboration as Art Practice.” Abstract: This portfolio of compositions involved the creation of multimedia works within the context of collaborative artistic practice. This interest has resulted from my increasing participation in multidisciplinary collaborative projects in recent years as a composer and singer. In the portfolio of works I have drawn on a range of theoretical texts from the fields of cognitive science, psychology, sociology and spirituality to develop a supportive discourse with which to reflect on the creative intersection of activities. Five collaborative compositions were created and realised. These range from a self-generative installation to a traditional film score. To examine the creative process, I have constructed a continuum that situates each piece between polarities of product or process-driven work. On one side of this continuum is Beads, a generative sound/video installation which explores video tracking as a compositional agent. At the opposite pole is The Old Woman in the Woods, a typical cinematic film score. Situated between these two extreme points are Terroir, Let It Go, and Aspects of Trees. Aspects of Trees is a hyperimprovisational system for visual projections, live cello, and software application. Let it Go explores the balance between improvisation, composition and “composed” instruments. Terroir is a fixed media experimental film which uses a single data source collected from an old cell phone.

the user manual, 2007

Audio Mostly 2006, 2006