Emotion, Content, and Context in Sound and Music - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 236

Figure 1. Idealised Role of Emotion, Content and Context in a Computer Application

music is the single most important event resulting
from that experience.
The goal of this chapter is to explore the rela-
tionship between sound stimuli and human emo-
tion. In particular, this chapter examines the role
sound plays in conveying emotional information,
even from sources that may be visual in origin.
Equally, the chapter seeks to demonstrate how
human emotion is able to flip this paradigm and
influence music and sound selection, based on
emotional state and consideration of the context
of the user.
The content being represented digitally pro-
vides the opportunity to gain a greater under-
standing of the information present in a data set.
Information being stored often has a number of
characteristic features and structural elements
that can be identified automatically. For example,
music generally contains an identifiable structure,
which might consist of several movements, parts,
or, more commonly, verses and choruses. How-
ever, such structure can almost be considered frac-
tal , in that there are microscopic and macroscopic
levels of organisation and also repetition, ranging
from musical beats, bars, verses and choruses to
the level of the song itself.

Contextual data provides additional informa-
tion about factors that contribute to making the
user interaction experience much more relevant
and effective by acquiring knowledge of the ex-
ternal factors that influence decision making and
the emotion of the user.
The conceptual diagram of Figure 1 shows
an idealised situation in which a large database
of audio media is presented to the user through a
suitable application (such as a computer game).
In this scenario, the user's emotion and context
are analysed and compared against analysis of
appropriate media content . This provides selection
of the 'best fit' media that will further stimulate
and engage the user in the most effective way.
The chapter explains the fundamentals of
emotional stimulation using sounds and music,
whilst retaining relevance to the audiologist. We
demonstrate that by analysing the information
present within media and considering its applica-
tions, significant advantages can be gained which
improve user experiences, reduce overheads, and
aid in the development of more suitable, efficient
applications: whether they be computer games or
other audio tools.