This years's theme

The theme for this year is "Symbolic Sound". This theme should be the focus of our discussions and could include:

• Symbolic Sounds in Virtual Worlds: sound design for animation
• Emerging symbols: Audio conventions and traditions in sound for games
• Charging with Meaning: How sound can make or break a computer game
• Leading a group Sound Design Exercise: Sound imagined, observed, and remembered
• Guiding a group exercise / improvisation: Communicating with Sound Symbols
• A Crash of Symbols: Listening to environmental sounds symbolically
• Sound design tutorial: Creating sound objects where none exist
• Discussion and performance of a music composition comprising symbolic sounds
• Discussion and performance of a symbolic soundtrack for an imaginary film
• Lost Sounds: Composing with sounds that symbolize a specific time and place
• From the narrative to simulation: The changing role of Sound from illustration to imagination
• Music is not a language: an argument that sound is not symbolic
• Phenomenological analysis of Sound examples from the Arts and the real world
• The symbolic value of the acoustic space: From the cathedral to the iPod
• Symbolism in the classical western music tradition & electroacoustic music: Tonality, instrumentation, melody
• From "Klangmalerei" to "Soundscape"
• Acoustic symbols in nature and human cultures
• The role of sound in the world's religions
• Sound in creation myths
• Numinous sound objects