Editor’s note: Arachnophonia (“Arachno” = spider / “-phonia” = sound) is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
All links included in these posts will take you to either the library catalog record for the item in question or to additional relevant information from around the web.
Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by student manager Brianna (class of 2023) and features insert title info here. Thanks, Brianna!
Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination by William Cheng
In Sound Play, William Cheng dives into the nature of players’ engagements with the audio of video games, from horror to fantasy and more. Cheng explores how the virtual world of video games allows sound designers to play with sound and music in ways that would otherwise not be possible in the real world, and how our interactions with these sounds (in the virtual world) can teach us about ourselves and what we value in the “real” world.
I find this book to be an extremely interesting exploration of a fast growing field of research in musicology. Ludomusicology, or the study of sound in video games, has become a rich field of study as video games become more and more integrated into our lives and the world around us. Cheng wonderfully adds to this body of work by exploring how our own interactions within a virtual world and the choices we make shape us into the people we are in our everyday lives.