Perceptual coherence as an analytic for procedural music and audio mappings in virtual space

Real-time data generated by virtual actors and their mediated interactions in simulated space can be repurposed to dynamically generate sound and music. Procedural audio and music systems afford interaction designers, composers and sound artists the opportunity to create tight couplings between the visual and auditory modalities. Designing procedural mapping schemata can become problematic when players or observers are presented with audio-visual events within novel environments wherein the validity of their own prior knowledge and learned expectations about sound, image and interactivity are put into question. This paper presents the results of a user-study measuring users´ perceptions of audio-visual crossmodal correspondences between low-level attributes of motion and sound. Study results were analyzed using the Bradley-Terry statistical model, effectively calculating the relative contribution of each crossmodal attribute within each attribute pairing to the perceived coherence or ´fit´ between audio and visual data.