Scholars exploring growing field of video game music at YSU confab

YOUNGSTOWN

Even though few at the time could have envisioned it, the earliest and most primitive video games and slot machines paved the way for a young, burgeoning academic discipline, an audio and gaming expert contends.

“We’re at the forefront of a new field,” Karen Collins told an audience of a few hundred who attended today’s first North American Conference on Video Game Music at the John J. McDonough Museum of Art, 525 Wick Ave., on the Youngstown State University campus.

The academic conference is the first of its kind in the United States, organizers said.

Collins is the research chairwoman in Interactive Audio at the Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She also was the keynote speaker for the gathering, which continues from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the museum.

The event is bringing together a variety of scholars from around the world to give presentations and presented papers on numerous aspects of music produced for video games.

Read more about the event in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.