Well I agree on the conceptual angle being difficult for a person who has
been blind all their life, sinse even though black is an absense of colour,
that absense is only made noticeable by the presence of something to be!
absent in the first place from a tehcnical standpoint.
However, one interesting representational point to bare in mind is that
black also carries with it a certain atmosphere and tone. For example, a
pitch dark closet (wherein you might find a grue), is frightening to a
sighted person not merely on the logical level that it might! contain
something, but on a rather more instinctive level as well.
that! sort of atmosphere and mood may indeed be represented quite accurately
in ambient or atmospheric sound. For example, in shades of doom there are
those small boxes which are only about two by two. In one of those boxes,
you don't hear any echo, everything is flat, and there is no background
sound at all. lets say a developer then introduced a character breathing
sound effect, muffled by the small inclosed space and lack of echoes. I've
heard this sort of tactic used very effectively in a number of more horror
style doctor who audio dramas, and it works exeptionally well, because it is
based on conjuring the same mood that a pitch dark closet would, that of
claustrophobia and the sense that something might be waiting to spring.
Likewise, my audio scanner suggestion. if a player had an audio scanner
picking up large amounts of emptiness where in other sections it picked up
many objects, well that gives an effective feeling of black, and if used in
an atmospheric sense could well provoke the same reaction.
take that scene for instance in the aliens films when the marines walk into
the reactor silo main hall, and are in the center of a huge black room, with
their motion trackers pointing out alien movement but not seeing anything in
their actual area because the aliens on the cieling above.
I could imagine a similar thing done in audio. Imagine a scene in shades of
doom where you walked into a very huge hallway, then suddenly got a
proximity alert, of something getting closer and closer but could hear no
actual noise, then suddenly bam! mutants everywhere!
This is of course leaving aside descriptions of synaesthesia or of music
representing certain colours, though that would be another avinue to
explore.
Beware the grue!
dark.
---
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