K.J. Donnelly – författare

The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture: Half-Heard Sounds and Peripheral Visions asks what it means to understand music as part of an audiovisual whole, rather than separate components of music and film. Bringing together revised and updated essays on music in a variety of media – including film, television, and video games – this book explores the importance of partially perceived and registered auditory and visual elements and cultural context in creating unique audiovisual experiences. Critiquing traditional models of the film score, The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture enables readers across music, film, and cultural studies to approach and think about audiovisual culture in new ways.

The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture: Half-Heard Sounds and Peripheral Visions asks what it means to understand music as part of an audiovisual whole, rather than separate components of music and film. Bringing together revised and updated essays on music in a variety of media – including film, television, and video games – this book explores the importance of partially perceived and registered auditory and visual elements and cultural context in creating unique audiovisual experiences. Critiquing traditional models of the film score, The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture enables readers across music, film, and cultural studies to approach and think about audiovisual culture in new ways.

From its earliest days as little more than a series of monophonic outbursts to its current-day scores that can rival major symphonic film scores, video game music has gone through its own particular set of stylistic and functional metamorphoses while both borrowing and recontextualizing the earlier models from which it borrows. With topics ranging from early classics like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. to more recent hits like Plants vs. Zombies, the eleven essays in Music in Video Games draw on the scholarly fields of musicology and music theory, film theory, and game studies, to investigate the history, function, style, and conventions of video game music.

From its earliest days as little more than a series of monophonic outbursts to its current-day scores that can rival major symphonic film scores, video game music has gone through its own particular set of stylistic and functional metamorphoses while both borrowing and recontextualizing the earlier models from which it borrows. With topics ranging from early classics like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. to more recent hits like Plants vs. Zombies, the eleven essays in Music in Video Games draw on the scholarly fields of musicology and music theory, film theory, and game studies, to investigate the history, function, style, and conventions of video game music.

The music for science fiction television programs, like music for science fiction films, is often highly distinctive, introducing cutting-edge electronic music and soundscapes. There is a highly particular role for sound and music in science fiction, because it regularly has to expand the vistas and imagination of the shows and plays a crucial role in setting up the time and place. Notable for its adoption of electronic instruments and integration of music and effects, science fiction programs explore sonic capabilities offered through the evolution of sound technology and design, which has allowed for the precise control and creation of unique and otherworldly sounds.

This collection of essays analyzes the style and context of music and sound design in Science Fiction television. It provides a wide range of in-depth analyses of seminal live-action series such as Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone, and Lost, as well as animated series, such as The Jetsons. With thirteen essays from prominent contributors in the field of music and screen media, this anthology will appeal to students of Music and Media, as well as fans of science fiction television.

The music for science fiction television programs, like music for science fiction films, is often highly distinctive, introducing cutting-edge electronic music and soundscapes. There is a highly particular role for sound and music in science fiction, because it regularly has to expand the vistas and imagination of the shows and plays a crucial role in setting up the time and place. Notable for its adoption of electronic instruments and integration of music and effects, science fiction programs explore sonic capabilities offered through the evolution of sound technology and design, which has allowed for the precise control and creation of unique and otherworldly sounds.

This collection of essays analyzes the style and context of music and sound design in Science Fiction television. It provides a wide range of in-depth analyses of seminal live-action series such as Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone, and Lost, as well as animated series, such as The Jetsons. With thirteen essays from prominent contributors in the field of music and screen media, this anthology will appeal to students of Music and Media, as well as fans of science fiction television.

In recent years, there has been something of an explosion in the performance of live music to silent films. There is a wide range of films with live and new scores that run from the historically accurate orchestral scores to contemporary sounds by groups such as Pet Shop Boys or by experimental composers and gothic heavy metal bands. It is no exaggeration to claim that music constitutes a bridge between the old silent film and the modern audience; music is also a channel for non-scholarly audiences to gain an appreciation of silent films. Music has become a means both for musicians and audiences to understand this bygone film art anew. This book is the first of its kind in that it aims to bring together writings and interviews to delineate the culture of providing music for silent films. It not only has the character of a scholarly work but is also something of a manual in that it discusses how to make music for silent films.

This book reconsiders audiovisual culture through a focus on human perception, with recourse to ideas derived from recent neuroscience. It proceeds from the assumption that rather than simply working on a straightforward cognitive level audiovisual culture also functions more fundamentally on a physiological level, directly exploiting precise aspects of human perception. Vision and hearing are unified in a merged signal in the brain through being processed in the same areas. This is illustrated by the startling ‘McGurk Effect’, whereby the perception of spoken sound is changed by its accompanying image, and counterpart effects which demonstrate that what we see is affected by different sounds accompanying sounds. This blending of sound and images into a whole has become a universal aspect of culture, not only evident in films and television but also in video games and short Internet clips. Indeed, this aesthetic formation has become the dominant of this period. The McGurk Universe attends to how audiovisual culture engages with and mediates between physiological and psychological levels.

This book approaches music in audiovisual culture as a complex merged signal rather than as a simple ‘addition’ to the images of film. The audiovisual is central to modern culture, with screens and speakers (including headphones) dominating communication, leisure and drama. While this book mostly addresses film, it also deals with sister media such as television and video games, registering that there is a ‘common core’ of synchronized image and sound at the heart of these different but related media. The traditions of sound and what Michel Chion calls ‘audiovision’ (1994), including principles of accompaniment and industrial processes from film, have been retained and developed in other media. This book engages with the rich history, and varied genres, different traditions and variant strategies of audiovisual culture. However, it also points to and emphasizes the ‘common core’ of flat moving images and synchronized sound and music which marks a dominant in electronic media culture (what might be called ‘screen and speaker/diaphragm culture’).

Addressing music as both diegetic and non-diegetic, as both songs and score, the analyses presented in this book aim to attend the precise interaction between music and other elements of audiovisual culture as defining overall configurations. While many writings about music in audiovisual culture focus on ‘what it communicates’, its processes are more complicated and can form a crucial semi-conscious (or perhaps unconscious) background. While music’s effect might be far from simple and unified, part of screen music’s startling effect comes from its unity with the image. Cross-modal ‘crosstalk’ between sound and image forms a whole new signal of its own. Each chapter marks a case study making for a varied collection that embraces rich history and different traditions, as well as the distinct aesthetic boldness of different genres and formats.