20-20 listening: a sound documentary dedicated to the study of listening experiences in acoustic environments

The intersection of sound and design is an exciting and complex space for artistic experimentation and research. My approach for this work was to design, write, record and mix seven podcast episodes that narrate my analysis and interpretation of how we listen to sounds and interpret their meaning. Each episode is dedicated to one topic, and presents multiple sound samples that illustrate my take on the subject. The episodes cover the basics of listening, how sound conveys information about objects in environments and how soundscapes are ubiquitous. They include how the music, sounds and noises in film convey meaning, represent physical qualities and produce an emotional connection with viewers. I also introduce an episode on dynamic audio in video games, and the process of design conceptualization and artistic interventions to make simple sound-based prototypes for people to make sounds, play and enjoy. Furthermore, I introduce the story of a whistling language in the Canary Islands to illustrate the concept of “acoustic community,” and how soundmarks create meaning and a sense of belonging in a social group. I also present a sonic composition that uses speech, sounds, noises and music to create an artistic narrative. This project is the sum of experiments in my sonic journey; it is an audio documentary that uses the listener’s focal attention to create stories about listening

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new

Bosses, Mobs, and Trash: A Transactional Approach to Videogame Narrative through Cooposition

This dissertation project presents a novel approach to videogame narrative studies through the lens of the active opposition of enemies, from boss monsters and villains down to the lowliest encounters with irritating “trash” enemies. Using transactionism—a theory of existence and aesthetics that claims all experience moves across a single physical plane—this dissertation coins and defines the concept of cooposition, a phenomenon in videogames that allows for narrative activity as co-constituted by the player and the game through active, productive antagonism. After identifying and exploring the lingering difficulties in accounting for videogame narrative in a complete and satisfying theory, this project establishes cooposition as an essential and powerful force of videogame experience before breaking down four permeable categories of videogame enemies. Through extensive examples, key texts, and gameplay experience, this project explores ideas related to how videogame narratives construct player identity, set aesthetic rhythms, and establish and manipulate narrative space and time. At issue is how games use enemies as narrative technique, how narrative in videogames emerge through cooposition, and how players co-create narrative phenomenon by “defeating” the game, productively. This is a first step towards a new theory of game narrative that emerges from gameplay experience, rejecting cognitive theories of literary narratology and suggesting new design strategies for game narrative that fully capitalize on coopositional dynamics

The evolution of case grammar

"There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.

The evolution of case grammar

There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so

The evolution of case grammar

There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so

The evolution of case grammar

There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so

The evolution of case grammar

There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so