The Role of Agency in Ludoacoustic Immersion: Experiencing Recorded Sound and Music in Situational Context

In sound-fx and music, expressive artifacts of the recording contribute to forming expectations on how an object (sound source) is interacting with an environment (room) while also accounting for the associated resonances occurring in that object. By switching attentional focus between action and resonance in object and environment as a result of comparing expectations to incoming stimuli, the context of a virtual situation is simulated by referencing to syntax of body-object-environment interaction. This virtual syntax may be partially projected onto the situational context of the user, leading to antecedents of immersion that depend on emotional arousal and personality traits of the listener. After having outlined a conceptual framework describing the mediation and agency detection of sonic expression within the acoustic properties of situational contexts, the paper provides an outlook on how these agents may be translated to meaningful structures that are yet to be studied in video games.