Georg Spehr
You probably heard about the topic of the upcoming festival “A MAZE. Interact … celebrating the convergence of computer games, music, and art” in Berlin. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a little insight into this field (so that you can start intelligent conversations in January)? That’s why we are not just writing about nice games every Tuesday, from next week on, we will also have a closer look at great artists every Thursday.
As a start, I interviewed Georg Spehr, whose love to give things sound, let him become a skilled communications engineer, lecturer at the FH Potsdam (interface design) & the University of Fine Arts Berlin (Sound Studies) and freelancing multimedia designer for a lot of cool projects. He is very much into functional sounds, which for example could add more realism, help in the reading of non-visible processes or keep you updated through ambient information and therefore create connections between virtual space, system and user. A way you could describe games, don’t you think? So after some years not playing computer games, he discovered them again and was wondering why there are just a few studies on their sound.
Why is sound so interesting for computer games?
Since the first games, sound was essential. Not just for nice narrative background music to set the mood, but as interactive feedback. You remember Pac-Man? There is no way to play it blind, but you’ll definitely hear if he eats a pellet or a fruit, the ghosts status of vulnerability and speed, the way to their cage after you bite them and much more. The strong connection between users and games reaction to each other differentiates them from other media and creates new concepts for sound.
Is there a difference in the producing of sound?
Instead of straight forward composed sounds, in many cases the player decides what to do when. Therefore for example, multiple easy and fast transitions or transformations must be possible at every time, without loosing variety.
Where is the convergence of games, sound and art?
The existence of chiptunes is a good example. I could also imagine a stairway in a game, in which every step has its own sound: Forget your primary goal and start playing music by jumping around on it. But there is more: As we can see controllers leaving the traditional paths of keyboard/mouse or gamepad and becoming more tactile, new ways of interactions arise. Interactions which are often explored in context of art and design. Nintendos wii-interface for example created an own soundworld for an appropriate support of the simple, intuitive handling.
The Future…
Who knows..? Technically, we may will advance in the possibilities of dynamic sound without samples, but realistic computergenerated ones. An other interesting thing could be digital games beyond the screen. If gaming comes into an urban setting- how will it affect and get affected by sound?
