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even if the eyes themselves are more or less fully
developed from week twenty five. However, we
can hear and recognize sound such as the voices
of our parents or melodies from a computer game
prior to birth and respond to such auditory stimuli
by kicking and moving around. It can be asserted
that sound activates the fetus. When we grow up,
hearing is still physically
affective
and may induce
both conscious and reflexive physical responses.
Rapid and loud sounds may be frightening while
slow and soft ones may be relaxing. When listen-
ing to the long sequence of the breathing sound
in the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
(Kubrick,
1968), it is our experience that it is almost impos-
sible not to fall into the same rhythm and breathe
in synchronization with the sound of the film.
The bottom line is that hearing includes us in
the environment, making us part of it rather than
separating us from it. Listening is part of feeling
immersed and immersion is a perceptual, body
based experience.
Central to human perception and cognition is
the configuration of the human body and its abil-
ity to move around within an environment. This
is the basis for a number of theories on embod-
ied and situated cognition, that is, how humans
make meaning of the environment in which they
are situated. We propose that the organization of
sound within computer game environments would
benefit from some basic insight into cognitive
theory and the idea of basic level primacy (La-
koff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). A central
claim in Lakoff and Johnson's work is that the
objects we encounter may be understood from a
perspective of the superordinate, that is, basic and
subordinate levels of which the basic level is the
highest one that provides an object with an overall
understandable form and a general user pattern.
The concept of a chair is, for instance, at the ba-
sic level, whereas furniture is at a superordinate
level and a specific red and white chair, made of
steel and concrete, is at the subordinate level. The
more detailed meaning we can assign to any given
object the more subordinate it is. We do not have
a common user pattern for furniture, nor could
the whole category be described by 1simple and
understandable form. For example, a table and a
cupboard are both pieces of furniture but they do
not look the same or have the same schemata of use.
Although there are good reasons to follow Ong's
idea about the bipolarity of vision and hearing, we
argue that sound might also be understood from
the perspective suggested by Lakoff and Johnson.
Furthermore, we constantly observe the environ-
ment through
points of observation
which include
all our senses (Gibson, 1986). The human mind
and the human body are not primarily separate
units but make up complex systems of which the
visual and auditory sensory systems are of great
importance for our understanding of the world.
The configuration of the human body has effects
on human perception as well as human cognition.
Gibson (1986) suggests a number of different
kinds of vision which are based on the situations
they are employed in:
•
Snapshot vision: fixating a point and then
exposing some other point momentarily
•
Aperture vision: successive scanning of
the visual stimuli
•
Ambient vision: looking around by turning
the head
•
Ambulatory vision: Looking around by
moving towards objects.
In a real time strategy (RTS) game like
Warcraft
III
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2002), the player has
a larger visual field than the controlled characters
she is commanding, enabling an overview of the
diegetic environment using 3 of the 4 different
types of vision. She can use snapshot vision to
fixate a point, aperture vision to perform succes-
sive scanning, and ambulatory vision by moving
towards objects. If the controlled avatar is turned
around, the visual field, as such, does not rotate.
This is the common practice in RTS games. The
player may, to some extent, change the angle of
the visual field which is also somewhat limited
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