conference logo

Playlist "Vintage Computing Festival Berlin 2015"

Time affects

Dr. Jan Claas van Treeck

Music and sound are omnipresent companions of computer and electronic games. Often understood as an equivalent to film scores their role oscillates between pure ornament and a tool for additional "pacing" of actions and plot. Image and sound should thus usually correspond. But on a purely physiological level music creates bodily effects in the player, effects that are possibly beyond the reach of the player‘s rational control over himself – they create measurable affects – via music the players body is physiologically connected to the gaming system. The music plays with the player‘s body – for the better or the worse in terms of the game. The talk presents both a critical introduction into research conducted on body-music-synchronizations and discusses the results of a recent study on the physiological and psychological effects of music and computer games.