game-audio.org comprises a collection of sonic-centric game-audio projects focused on the construction of novel grammar for dynamic media in sound, music and in composition using 3Daudio and spatial thinking. It is divided in four distinctive sections; Role-playing of Musical Instruments, Sonic Expeditions, bio-Simulators and Musical Duels. In every scenario, sound is always key for progression. Overall, game-audio projects are informed by cultures which provide a high value on non-visual modes of experiencing the world (e.g. ancient hunters, merchants, fishermen and seafarers) and who relied on sound when visually-oriented tools had failed (kamals, quadrants, mariner's astrolabes or sextants).
These projects explore sound-centric techniques for pathfinding and orientation in immersive environments, throughout the creation of interactive worlds employing physics-graphic and audio game engines. This space embraces questions emerging from the use of virtual and non-virtual instruments and performers in immersive media environments. From a practice-led perspective it explores space co-presence, anthropomorphism and the breakdown and re-embodiment of physical and aural taxonomies.
Can we obtain creative expression at the intersections of real and body-scanned instruments and performers? Is it possible to navigate musical instruments via live game-audio performance? What if the main characters in your interactive narrative were musical instruments?. How can we extract 'performance DNA' of virtuoso performers and put it into their virtual avatars?
These are imaginary sonic expeditions to aurally-rich places using game-audio as the interface for navigation. The player becomes the performer, sound sculpturer or casual navigator as ‘the captain of a ship’. Such journeys place the navigator on situations where sound becomes the key to progress throughout the 3D environment. Colliding musical spheres or exploring historical facts become the grammar of the narratives on which players can immerse themselves while creating aural beauty.
Nature has inspired humans and informed musical compositions and other art forms for centuries. These bio-simulators use biological forms at the centre of the research enquiry. Can they behave as musical instruments? How do they inform composition?
Musical battles and duels are often a form of musical entertainment and a vehicle for testing self-estem and virtuosism. However they can also become a mechanism to compose and perform great musical ideas, when sonic imagination and performance skills are tested and pushed to their limits.