GAME_BOY
GAME_boY - Acousmatic
Year: 2020
GAME_boY is a piece of acousmatic music inspired by the immersive and fragmented experience of playing a video game. It uses only sounds from the famous Game Boy console. Sounds from iconic games – beeps, tunes, digital noises – are separated, changed and put back together in a musical structure that copies the way you think during a game: not straightforward, very active, with lots of visual and aural stimulation.
The game is like a journey, where the sounds you hear are connected to how you feel and what you do in the game. Sounds come together, mix, and then change, creating layers of feeling. The listener is pulled into a electronic stream of thoughts where nostalgia and excitement live together in a thick and layered sound.
GAME_BOY is more than just a nod to old-school video games. It's a look at how we see, remember and hear digital media. By using creative spatialisation and tone morphology, the piece encourages listeners to think again about the musical meaning of "functional" sounds, and puts them in a context that is poetic, abstract and evocative.