Abstract

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics edited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. This chapter explores concepts of interactivity as they relate to sound production in video games. A guiding assumption of the chapter is that interactivity is a definitive paper of new digital aesthetics in general and gaming in particular. And yet, the question of interactivity has not been addressed with sufficient stringency in scholarly research. At the heart of the chapter are these questions: What makes interactive sound different from noninteractive sound? Where does interacting with sound fit into our understanding of our experience of sound and music in media? How do we begin to approach interactive sound from a theoretical perspective? The implications of interactivity are examined, specifically the notion of sound as a feedback device and as a control mechanism.. In these ways the chapter works toward a more comprehensive understanding of sounds in new media contexts that addresses their particularity in interactive contexts rather than resting on previous assumptions about the primacy of sounds as narrative devices.