Sounding escape: examining the sonic contours of play and story in The Author’s Enigma

ABSTRACT This article draws on video data from a larger empirical project tracing how five adults learned to escape a series of complex multi-linear escape rooms. Zeroing in one room, The Author’s Enigma, it interrogates sound as a design feature and more-than-representational resource that co-produced play. Refracted through more conceptual and methodological conversations concerning the sonic, analyses highlight how sound mediated participant interaction and shaped the encounter of escape through affective sonic encounters. As this article suggests, sound was both a mediating resource and an atmosphere. Using transcription as theory, authors demonstrate how sound – as an atmosphere and vibrational force – forwarded activity and produced moments of affective resonance.