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Adaptive
Music Going for Broke Example: Adaptive Sentence Texture with Meter, Rhyme, and Transitions
Knowing
Your Arsenal Adaptability
at the Letter Level Example: Adaptive Letter Texture
(The level begins as Captain Brave-O enters heroically. Poem mood: HEROIC) thbifaarakopthbifaarako (The landscape changes; seals are nearby. Switch poem to CREEPY) pthbifaarakopibysal (Seal surprise attack! Switch poem to COMBAT) TLSWERIPIAMISFORAHACAA (The last seal is subdued but the territory is still scary. Also, Captain Brave-O's health is low. Switch to CREEPY, INJURED combo) uwocbrpuacvpitiaadb Shockingly,
that little example of pure adaptive letter texture was packed full
of meaning! How could this be? Well, don't forget that the game is
its own narrative. The player already knows what's going on. Our job
as adaptive poets is to merely to enhance the mood of the story --
telling it is somewhat redundant. Still, adaptive letter texture on
its own is somewhat limited in terms of what it can express. Seal Hunter: The Final Battle Now that I've introduced my secret weapon, I'll leave you with one final example. The final example demonstrates how one might combine some of these approaches into a complete adaptive game poetry solution. Don't forget that the purpose of this exercise has been to learn something about adaptability in structured art forms, so that we can apply it to making interactive video game audio soundtracks. Meanwhile, think about the example that follows. What techniques are being used? Why did the game's Poetry Director make the choices he did? How much would this cost to implement and produce? Example: Seal Hunter, Level 10
Captain Brave-O's back again, Annotated Bibliography Hofstader, Douglas R. Gödel, Escher, Bach - 20th Anniversary Edition: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le Ton beau de Marot - In Praise of the Music of Language. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Both Hofstader works explore symbol and meaning, form and content. The former has cognition and self-awareness as its central theme, while the latter is about communication and relationships. Hofstader draws deep and engaging analogies between his themes and the systems and structures that he explores (math, art, and music in the former; poetry, translation, and language in the latter). Frequently (particularly in GEB), the very structure and/or form of his writing demonstrates the content - an impressive device that adds an extra dimension to his exposition. Both of these books contributed enormously to the form, content, and even tone of my little paper. Jourdain, Robert. Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy - How Music Captures Our Imagination. New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1998. A very broad survey of the phenomenon of music, from the physical and biological to the psychological and the sublime. Not an academic reference work, it's very readable - yet obviously exhaustively researched across many disciplines. Especially interesting to me were the explorations of how different elements of music (particularly patterns at different structural levels) are processed in different parts of a listener's brain, and the incredibly complex relationships that are involved in even the perception of music. OK, put it like that and it sounds boring, but seriously - anyone who is even remotely interested in music or audio will thoroughly enjoy this book. I'm not kidding, buy it! The takeaway is universal, despite a fairly western-classical-tradition-centric focus. Room for a sequel I guess… Schoenberg, Arnold. Fundamentals of Musical Composition. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1970. You wouldn't think that one could learn how to compose from a book, but something special clicked into place for me with this one. Partly the timing was just right - years of intensive training probably had something to do with it… Whatever it was, I really did understand music differently after reading this book. Unexpectedly (considering Schoenberg's prominent role in the deconstruction of tonality), the book limits itself strictly to traditional classical composition. It doesn't discuss or challenge tonality at all; it merely explains how and why the structures work. Despite the specific focus, there are lessons to be learned here about cohesiveness of form, repetition, and variation that can be applied to structures in any genre (…any medium?). Kind of an enigma is that the structure of the book itself is confusing at some points almost to the point of loosing the point entirely. Also, unlike the other works cited in this bibliography, it's extremely dry - unless you're really interested in classical music theory. Nonetheless, for me it was a gem. Grab it… if you can find it! ________________________________________________________
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Resource
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