New Wine in New Skins - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 399

tion makes no claims to reproduce reality, and in
that sense it cannot be wrong, it can only be bad.
(Dyson, 1996, p. 84)

In terms of designing sonic objects it would
also be worthwhile to investigate ways to use
generative technologies, such as physical mod-
elling, in a creative, unorthodox way. The play
with qualia, with sonic “traces” of materiality or
physical processes, of the human or the animal,
the organic or the inorganic, the material and the
structural, could be achieved in real time following
similar semantic approaches as in film, as outlined
above. The system could also be devised as a
kind of “real time sound designer”, assembling
sonic components into complex sonic amalgams
as micro-narratives (Back, 1996) on the fly. This
would result in a subversion of the physical model-
ling paradigm into “fictional physical modelling”,
linking it to dynamic interactive processes rather
than a “trigger” paradigm. Why not take Farnell's
(2011) proposal of a “behavioural sonic object”
further by subjecting the control of the sound
generation algorithm to any imaginable narrative
or performative expression? In the game Love
(Steenberg, upcoming) the available processing
power is used for a very distinct and aesthetically
innovative graphical post-process in real time.
Sound could be approached in the same way: for
example, to use the processing power to create new
sounds “on the fly”, instead of simulating reality.
This would be a sound design which works with
potentiality, as demanded, rather than crafting the
actual sample itself.

Designing for Autopoietic Content

Designing for autopoietic content means that the
content of a game is designed as a system of po-
tentialities , framed and specified by superordinate
qualities of a desired game experience, rather than
consisting of a finite sum of fixed assets. This is
potentiality embodied within formulations of the
methods and procedures of its generation and the
models of their mutual interaction. This is not a
new design strategy; it is used, for example, in
procedural art, and also for experimental music
and live electronics. While artistic design strate-
gies can and should be used for creating unique
sonic experiences in games, they are of limited
relevance as the related “application domains” are
free from a-priori functional demands and do not
necessarily rely on interactivity and play. Closer
to the sought characteristics, even if originat-
ing from an entirely different field, are certain
sonification methods, in particular Model Based
Sonification (Hermann & Ritter, 1999). Here, a
sound generating system is set up in such a way
that the totality of all components that generate
a sound are driven by the dataset that is fed into
the system. The system is then treated as a form
of “virtual emitter” that can be excited through
a user's interaction, for example, by virtually
touching it with an interface. This could very well
be an inspiration for an experimental approach to
designing the sounds for a game: Following the
analogy, all entities of the games could be specific
parametrical setups of a general sonic model,
which could be derived from an overall aesthetic
concept, and the sounds would be generated in
real time through the agency of both players, non-
player characters (NPCs) and the world-system
of the game.

Designing for Autopoietic
Second Order Semantics

As in film, it is paramount to understand how
meaning of sound emerges from socio-cultural
processes of production and reception. Sonic meta-
signs like symbols and key sounds, the practice
of citation and remix, and the play with codes
are some examples of those complex sonic signs.
In a computational, dynamic, modular system,
such complex systems of meaning creation can
be assembled on the fly, in real time, driven by
interaction. The current paradigm of using more