Sound design is as important as visual design
We at Illustrious believe that sound design should be regarded on an equal footing with visual design as an extremely engaging and powerful tool - particularly in this supersturated visual world we live in.
What do you think?
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posted by Graham Smith
on 20 February 2007
Sound design
I agree that sound should be regarded on a equal footing as visual design.
You only have to look at how the emotional impact of a movie is lessened by removing the soundtrack or even just changing the soundtrack. In fact, if you consider that environmental, ambient sound and dialog in movies are rerecorded/remixed so that the director can have absolute control of the emotional impact of a scene you can see how important it is.
Sound acts as a mnemonic for brands. For example, it's easy for me to tell if someone has switched on a Nokia phone on the train by the startup tone - even if I can't see the device.
In order to differentiate, I believe companies need to look at providing multi-sensory experiences. I believe sound needs to play a much more important role and really should be seen within agencies as a design discipline itself.
posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 21 February 2007
The gift of sound and vision
I've long held the view that the use of audio is one of the interactive designer's 'secret weapons', in that it can add unexpected and rewarding depth to otherwise two-dimensional material. It has helped distinguish interactive media from the purely visual worlds of other communications media in subtle and subliminal ways.
I think it's also true to say that many more people are beginning to recognise this, and I am increasingly noting references to the creative use of sound and the desirability of employing good sound design in all sorts of places in the press, on TV and on the radio. I see that 'TypoBerlin' <http://www.typoberlin.de/index.php/1/3> is given over to the theme of music this year, and I would be expecting this conference to embrace a much broader interpretation of what constitutes music, than say, the annual 'In The City' music industry conference <http://www.inthecity.co.uk>, which although addressing the interactive concerns of the industry, nevertheless confines itself usually to discussion of how to collect royalties from downloads rather than really get to grips with the creative possibilities of sound and vision in the digital age. This year 'In The City' is hosted in New York rather than its home town of Manchester, which hopefully will bring another dimension to it.
Sound can be a powerful tool with which to help people navigate through, as well better comprehend and contextualise hypermedia content. That said, without careful and judicial application sound can be annoying and intrusive, and we have all visited websites where the ability to switch off the audio has been a necessity. Simply adding a sound to a button click is not always a desirable complement to engaging interactive design.
One place where the power of audio can be an essential component is in the more environmental demands of exhibitions and installations. Harnessing and focussing audio in an unobtrusive manner offers great scope for intelligent uses of sound delivery systems.
I'd be interested to hear more of ways in which sound has helped convey information beneficially in galleries or other public spaces, and I don't mean those clunky hand-held audio guides or portable headsets that have the curious effect of transforming an audience into strange automatons wandering around in their own personal soundspheres.
posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 22 February 2007
Audio projects submitted to dynamo london
Don't forget to look at these:
Forty Part Motet http://www.dynamolondon.org/projects/46
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts website http://www.dynamolondon.org/projects/41
MemoryScape http://www.dynamolondon.org/projects/38
posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 23 February 2007
and ...
Friendchip http://www.dynamolondon.org/projects/4
Kraftwerk http://www.kraftwerk.de
posted by christopher quine
on 23 February 2007
clunky
It's interesting to read the comments about the clunky audio guides as I am currently researching ways in which to use audio for navigation in locative media. The idea here is that, rather than set a user up with a set of headphones which essentially cuts them off from the 'real' world, we want to use audio to a: provide some sort of navigational function, and b: augment, or reenforce a mood or feeling while not fully defining it. I have recently started a paper (by no means complete, or comprehensive) that addresses some techniques that we are testing. As we are designing augmentative experiences for natural environments, we try to be very conscious to the idea of not taking the user away from natural stimulation, but somehow compliment it, all the while attempting to add navigational cue's for things like virtual scavenger hunts where you might search for art peices hidden in a forest etc. My next project deals with creating my own locative soundtrack to one of my favourite walks. As an audio designer might design a score to a film, my film would be viewed while physically moving through real space. Always changing based on time of day, weather, animals in the area etc. I like the idea as one could rent my movie the same way they could walk to the local rental shop.
A link to the really rough draft: http://www.sneakerbike.com/visual/cquine-audio-nav.pdf
posted by Zoe Black
on 28 February 2007
audio branding
in 2006 NMK and musictank produced an event which looked into the current and potential use of audio in marketing'Sounds subliminal'. The event idea originally came from reading Jon Ronsons book, 'Men who stare at goats'. In the book and subsequent documentary Ronson explores the US militarys use of audio as a device for torture. A strong endorsement indeed for the power of sound !
For anyone interested the event was really fascinating, and a report can be found at:
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2006/04/29/sounds-subliminal