Underscoring Characters: Music in New Media
Marc Downie and Nyssim Lefford
Abstract:

This paper discusses the creation of music in interactive digital media. In particular, it is intended to further study into the role and composition of dramatic music in the worlds created by the Synthetic Characters group at the MIT Media Laboratory. Music raises important general issues of authorship in new media; we discuss these. Firstly, we undertake a comparative examination of dramatic scoring techniques in the ‘old’ medium of film. We then consider the effective implementation of similar techniques in the new medium. In order to make effective comparisons of musical techniques, it is necessary not only to describe the application of film scoring methods to the to Synthetic Character context, but also to contrast these to other techniques for interactive music. Finally, we review the latest music-related work in Synthetic characters.

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