Project by  Sargam Telang and Malin Jauad Almeida Marques

Abstract Sound is an important part of storytelling in audiovisual media. Sonification of different fantastical aspects can tell the audience much about different characters and things. Robots are one of the common fantastical characters that need to be deliberately sonified to indicate different aspects of their character. Often, one of these traits is often an indication of gender and behaviour. We investigated these traits in a form where we asked both quantitative and qualitative questions about the participants' perceptions. We found that most were able to accurately gauge what gender the noise was conveying. We also found that participants projected their biases in the behaviours of masculine and feminine-sounding robots.