S
ome days when Marielle V. Jakobsons goes to work in the morning, she’s thinking about a million cockroaches scuttling through the walls of a house. She thinks about what that might sound like. Is it a hissing sound? Or more like a scratching sound? Is there clicking? Chattering? Fluttering? When she gets to work, she thinks about how to replicate that sound — maybe not the exact sound of real, live cockroaches, but how we might think a cartoonish infestation of bugs might sound. As a sound designer for the popular video game series The Sims, Jakobsons spends her days creating the noises that make up that fantastical virtual world. From the made-up “Simlish” language the characters speak, to their tapping footsteps and the fantastical moments that make the game fun, “all of the sounds that go into the game have to be created somehow,” she says. “Sometimes you have to get those gushy, goopy sounds of when you’re cooking, or dropping splattery things.” And sometimes your character’s house gets infested with bugs.
Sound Gardener
In work and play, Marielle V. Jakobsons lives a life entrenched in sound BY LEAH SOTTILE
“In the real world you don’t necessarily hear them just walking around, or hear them talking,” Jakobsons explains. “But we don’t want the literal sound of cockroaches in the game. It doesn’t really translate. We’re trying to think about how to create that sense and that tension and that gross feeling, while also making it sound like an insect.” In her career and her art, Jakobsons lives a life that revolves around sound. She’s a member of the bass-heavy electronic music duo Date Palms, which has released albums on the beloved independent music label Thrill Jockey Records. She creates installations in museums — ones that allow people to experience the way sound interacts with objects. Jakobsons also performs solo music (like she’ll do this week at Eastern Washington University) that draws on ...continued on next page
FEBRUARY 20, 2014 INLANDER 37