Inaudible Systems, Sonic Users : Sound Interfaces and the Design of Audibility Layouts in Digital Games

Abstract

The audible dimension of computer games is revealing of contemporary digital culture and the restructuring of the current media ecology. In this article, I observe some of these rearrangements through a tentative probing of the interfacing conditions of gaming established by their sound design projects. Through a media-archaeological approach, I observe how sonic space is organized, especially in the design of digital games in first and third-person perspectives, which take part in the construction of playable audiovisual environments. I begin the article with a brief examination of different concepts of interface, and probe how the sound design of games may relate with previous audiovisual formats. Then, I analyse the particular ways in which computers and humans are interfaced through sound in order to estimate how user interfaces are representative of underlying reorganizations in contemporary sensibility and culture.