The Sound of Archetypes: A Case Study in Immersive Sonic Translation of the Major Arcana

All rights remain with the authors under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Proc. of the 17th Int. Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, London, United Kingdom, 2025 The Sound of Archetypes: A Case Study in Immersive Sonic Translation of the Major Arcana Tamas Czuper¹ [0009-0009-5142-9812] * University College London, Marshgate Building, 7 Sidings St, London E20 2AE, United Kingdom *[email protected] Abstract. This case study paper reports on the development and implementation of an aesthetic sonic translation methodology for three cards from the Tarot's Major Arcana. While extensive work exists in data sonification treating source material as value-neutral information, the sonification of culturally symbolic systems such as the Tarot remains underexplored in both scholarly and technical literature [1]. Through practice-based investigation, I document the design process of creating immersive sonic environments for The Tower, The Fool, and The Moon, where each archetype becomes a navigable world with distinct acoustic physics and production rules. The paper presents a three-stage pipeline, archetype extraction, acoustic mapping through production, and spatial staging, showing how production techniques create meaning through sound perception. Mixed in Dolby Atmos, these sonic worlds offer insights for sound designers, artists, and researchers interested in the intersection of ancient wisdom systems and contemporary spatial audio technologies. Keywords: aesthetic sonification, spatial audio, immersive audio, psychoacoustics, sound design, symbolic systems. 1 Introduction The Tarot's Major Arcana consists of twenty-two archetypal images used for centuries as symbolic mirrors for human transformation. They are explored visually and narratively, offering profound layers, elemental, numerological, and psychological, that can be powerfully interpreted through sound. This paper explores an aesthetic approach to creating immersive sonic translations of the Major Arcana. By merging personal artistic Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 623 T. Czuper practice with systematic research, I analyse each card's symbolic meanings to derive specific acoustic rules that govern its sonic world. Traditional sonification typically treats data as neutral, focusing on systematic mappings for functional interpretation [2, 3]. By contrast, recent approaches to 'aesthetic' or 'autographic' sonification emphasise meaning-driven strategies for culturally symbolic systems [1]. Existing literature in aesthetic sonification indicates that perceptual or functional mappings [4], rather than symbolic coherence or archetypal semantics. Most work still targets instrumental or scientific data; culturally charged symbol systems like the Tarot remain predominantly visual or textual [5] with little attention to its sonic affordances. This gap presents an opportunity to document how archetypal concepts can be turned into sound while keeping their symbolic power and creating new ways to experience them. These three cards serve as detailed case studies from a larger ongoing project encompassing all 22 Major Arcana. By merging semiotic theory [6,7], psychoacoustic foundations, and world-building principles [8], the project contributes to sound design practices, therapeutic applications, and spatial audio research. I present a three-stage design methodology: extracting core archetypal traits, mapping these to acoustic parameters through creative production and psychoacoustic principles and staging them within immerse spatial environments. While formal listener studies represent a valuable future direction, this initial work focuses on establishing the theoretical framework and demonstrating its practical application. By treating the Major Arcana as subjects for aesthetic sonic translation, this work contributes to multiple fields: it offers sound designers a template for translating symbol systems into sonic experiences, provides new tools for immersive media and therapeutic applications, and advances our understanding of how meaning can be encoded and transmitted through spatial audio. More broadly, it suggests that archetypal knowledge need not be confined to visual or linguistic representation but can be encountered directly through embodied sonic experience. 2 Theoretical Framework The study follows a practice-based research paradigm in which creative making and critical reflection form iterative cycles of inquiry [9]. Process notes, obstacle logs and documented "aha" moments satisfy Candy and Edmonds' criteria for evidencing knowledge through practice [10]. These three theoretical streams - semiotics, psychoacoustics, and world-building through production - merge to form what I conceptualise as "aesthetic sonic translation". Archetypes can be understood as universal patterns of human experience, while cultural symbolic systems such as the Tarot encode these archetypes in historically and culturally specific forms. The Tarot’s Major Arcana therefore operates as a symbolic framework that mediates between timeless archetypal structures and their cultural representations. In this project, I treat the cards as symbolic gateways that allow archetypal dynamics to be translated into sonic form. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 624 The Sound of Archetypes Unlike a musical interpretation that might foreground melody and traditional harmonic narrative, this translation approach treats sound as a medium for exploring the experiential essence of each archetype. While I employ careful chord selection and harmonic progressions, these serve not as primary musical statements but as architectural elements within immersive sonic worlds. This approach prioritises the creation of inhabitable sonic spaces over traditional musical structures, using the full spectrum of sound design and production. The aesthetic dimension is crucial: choices about sound quality, spatial design, and timing work together with systematic analysis to create sonic worlds that feel both symbolically accurate and experientially compelling. Yet it remains fundamentally an aesthetic practice, each decision filtered through artistic sensibility about what sounds right for each archetype. 2.1 Sound Symbolism and Semiotics My approach to sonifying the Major Arcana begins with Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic model of semiotics, which posits that meaning emerges through the relationship between a sign-vehicle (the perceptible form), an object (what is referenced), and an interpretant (the sense made by a receiver). Peirce's distinction between icon, index, and symbol provides a rigorous scaffold for mapping visual Tarot elements to auditory phenomena [6]. Each card image is treated as an icon whose indexical features, number, colour, and elemental correspondences, are translated into sound parameters. While the emergent symbol is the listener's interpretation mediated by cultural archetypes [7]. In the context of this project, carefully crafted sonic gestures serve as sign-vehicles that point toward specific archetypal objects, The Fool's chaotic potential, The Tower's structural collapse, The Moon's veiled mysteries, with the goal of evoking consistent interpretations in the listener's experience. This archetypal layer follows Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, positioning the Major Arcana as culturally persistent signifiers [11]. Semetsky's semiotic reading of Tarot further legitimises this bridge between depth psychology and sign theory, demonstrating how the cards function as a symbolic system capable of multiple modes of interpretation [5]. Sound possesses unique semiotic properties that make it particularly suited for archetypal representation. Unlike visual signs, sonic signs unfold temporally and penetrate the body directly, creating what Meyer [12] calls "embodied meaning." A sudden metallic crash does not merely represent destruction; it enacts it in the listener's nervous system. The Hanged Man's suspension between states manifests through reversed audio loops and the subtle, persistent sound of door handles being tried, futile attempts at escape that embody the card's essence of voluntary entrapment and suspended agency. This immediacy allows sonic signs to function on multiple levels simultaneously: as indices (causally connected to their source), icons (resembling their object), and symbols (conventionally associated with meaning). Morris's extension of Peircean semiotics into pragmatics [13] provides a crucial framework for understanding how these Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 625 T. Czuper sonic signs operate in practice. The meaning of a sound emerges not just from its acoustic properties but from the context of its presentation and the listener's interpretive framework. This pragmatic approach acknowledges that while I may design a low rumble to signify The Tower's foundational shake, its ultimate meaning emerges through the listener's embodied encounter with that sound. 2.2 Psychoacoustic Foundations While semiotics provides the theoretical framework for how sounds convey meaning, psychoacoustics grounds these possibilities in the physiological and perceptual constraints of human hearing. The sonic translations in this work draw on established psychoacoustic principles, indicating certain acoustic properties reliably evoke specific physiological and emotional responses across diverse listeners [14, 15]. For instance, infrasonic frequencies below 20Hz, while barely audible, generate physical sensations of unease and instability because these frequencies resonate with body cavities and can trigger vestibular responses associated with danger. Similarly, consonant intervals such as perfect fifths and octaves are widely associated with perceptual stability and resolution, whereas dissonant combinations tend to induce tension or arousal [16, 17, 18]. Parameter choices are further informed by detailed psychoacoustic research, perceived loudness scales with sound-pressure level according to equal-loudness contours [19], and timbral brightness correlates closely with spectral centroid metrics, as characterised by Moore [20]. The emotional impact of these sonic environments is guided by mechanisms described in the BRECVEMA model of music-emotion induction, particularly focusing on 'emotional contagion' and 'episodic memory' [21]. Additionally, specific mappings, such as sharp transient sounds symbolising disruption or sustained low-frequency energy indicating foreboding, draw on empirical research in sound symbolism and auditory display [22]. It's essential to recognise that psychoacoustic responses, though strongly consistent, are not universally absolute. Cultural conditioning, personal associations, and individual physiological differences all significantly shape perception. Consequently, this framework uses psychoacoustic principles as foundational guidelines rather than rigid prescriptions, ensuring a nuanced, culturally sensitive approach to sonic archetype representation. 2.3 World-Building Through Production The third theoretical pillar extends beyond traditional spatial audio to embrace comprehensive world-building through detailed production techniques. Following Wolf's concept of constructed worlds [8], each Major Arcana card is conceived as a complete sonic environment with its unique physical laws, atmospheric conditions, and behavioural characteristics. Psycho-spatial attributes such as elevation and envelopment leverage localisation cues catalogued by Blauert [23] and further refined in contemporary perceptual models [24]. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 626 The Sound of Archetypes Evolving spatial trajectories are approached as gestural forms in a Spectro morphological sense [25], intentionally placed within an imagined diegetic universe consistent with Wolf’s [8] theory of sub-creation in transmedia storytelling. World-building, in this context, means establishing consistent rules governing how sound behaves within each archetypal space. For instance, The Fool's world employs the rule, gravity is negotiable, realised through a lifting automation curve, high pass filtering that intensifies with distance to evoke floating sensations, and reverbs suggesting limitless sky rather than enclosed environments. By contrast, The Tower's sonic environment follows catastrophic physics: stable reverbs abruptly gate, harmonic structures fracture, and spatial coordinates collapse. These worlds are defined not merely by the occurrence of sound events but by their behaviours. The Fool's sounds continuously loop from edges, creating an infinite playground; The Tower's sounds collide with barriers, producing shattering effects. Sounds in The Moon's environment becomes increasingly diffuse rather than quieter; in contrast, The Fool's sounds gently apply high pass filtering beyond a 50m radius. Each sonic environment has a signature atmospheric quality - The Fool's open sky dome reverb contrasts starkly with The Tower’s cathedral collapse. Production-driven world-building supports deeper characterisation. The Fool's world communicates excitement intertwined with uncertainty, achieved through unpredictable parameter automation and spatial drift. The Tower embodies a transition from structural certainty to chaos, realised through the progressive degradation of stable acoustic relationships. Each production decision directly informs the experiential journey through the sonic manifestation of archetypal realities. 3 Process 3.1 Overview: A Three-Stage Pipeline Through iterative cycles of experimentation and systematic refinement, I developed a three-stage pipeline for translating archetypal qualities into sonic experiences. This process emerged from practical needs: how to maintain symbolic integrity while creating compelling sonic worlds, how to ground intuitive insights in reproducible techniques, and how to balance artistic freedom with methodological consistency. Each stage addresses specific challenges encountered in practice. 3.2 Stage 1: Archetype Extraction The process began with each sonic translation by extracting core symbolic and energetic qualities from the cards. Visual features were first coded into an attribute matrix following the iconographic method set out by [26]. This stage mattered because it ensured production parameters would remain archetype driven rather than imposed by musical conventions. The extraction process combined three approaches: Symbolic Analysis, I examined traditional iconography, numerological associations, and elemental correspondences to identify concrete attributes that could inform acoustic Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 627 T. Czuper choices. For The Tower (XVI), themes of sudden upheaval and structural collapse suggested specific temporal and spatial behaviours - sounds would need to fall, shatter, and fail catastrophically. 3.3 Stage 2: Acoustic Mapping Through Sound Design and Production The second stage of the pipeline translates symbolic qualities into production parameters, where synthesis, sound design, and mixing choices become primary vehicles for archetypal meaning. Building on the tradition of parameter-mapping sonification [27], attributes such as timbre, dynamics, and temporal shape are treated as channels through which symbolic qualities can be expressed: sharp attacks can suggest rupture, while sustained swells convey ambiguity. These mappings draw on psychoacoustic principles but are ultimately shaped by aesthetic judgement. Spatialisation reinforces archetypal ‘world physics’ through strategies such as verticality, diffusion, and disorientation. The freedom to animate sound objects, varying speed, automating their paths, or shifting between organised and chaotic motion, provides further scope for symbolic articulation. Likewise, reverb selection and automation can reflect archetypal qualities, from infinite expanses to collapse. Here, production techniques align with the perspective of sonic interaction design [28] where tools cease to be neutral utilities and instead act as meaning-bearing devices. Compression can stage collapse; reverberation can suggest infinite or a closed space and panning or movement automation can enact instability. The combination of acoustic mapping and spatial staging thus integrates sound design and world-building, ensuring that each archetypal environment functions as a coherent and immersive sonic translation. 3.4 Integration This three-stage pipeline is not strictly linear. Discoveries in spatial staging might reveal new archetypal qualities, sending me back to extraction. Technical limitations in acoustic mapping might inspire creative solutions that better serve the archetype than my original plan. The methodology thus remains alive to the same transformative currents that animate the Tarot itself. Each completed sonic archetype undergoes a final ritual listening, where I return to the original card and ask: Does this sound world carry the archetype's essential transmission? If the answer is unclear, the cycle begins again, not as failure, but as deepening relationship with the mystery of the cards. 4 Case Studies 4.1 The Tower (XVI): Catastrophic Truth The Tower represents collapse and transformation, traditionally shown as lightning striking a structure [26]. Its sound world is constructed as a catastrophic environment: Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 628 The Sound of Archetypes infrasonic rumbles evoke instability, metallic crashes signal impact, and reverberations fracture into silence. These elements were chosen both for their archetypal associations with downfall and for their psychoacoustic capacity to generate unease through lowfrequency vibration and sharp transients [29]. The track places the listener inside a building as it gives way, visceral and terrifying, yet with fleeting moments of beauty in destruction. Sounds begin overhead before crashing downward, making vertical collapse the Tower’s defining spatial gesture. From this moment, the acoustic laws catastrophically fail, reverb suddenly gates to dry signal, spatial coordinates collapse from ceiling to floor, and harmonic relationships shatter into atonality. This is a world where certainty itself becomes the enemy. The final silence offers both devastation and renewal, a sonic reflection of the archetype’s dual nature as both annihilation and release. 4.2 The Fool (0): Quantum Potential The Fool symbolises innocence, unbounded potential, and playful chaos, often depicted as a youth stepping into the unknown [26]. Its sonic world is built around unpredictability: stochastic methods and probability-based processes generate melodic and spatial events that never fully resolve, creating perpetual motion without tonal centre [30]. Sounds drift upwards, loop back from boundaries, and emerge from unexpected directions, producing an acoustic space where gravity feels negotiable. Toy instruments, children’s voices, and ambiguous footsteps were selected for their capacity to suggest both innocence and instability. Production choices such as buoyant pitch rises and open reverb convey a sky-like environment, contrasting with sudden disorienting shifts in texture. The Fool’s soundscape thus functions as an infinite playground, exciting and uncertain, whose abrupt ending leaves the listener suspended, mirroring the archetype’s step into the void. Material transformations occur spontaneously - solid objects sound hollow, metallic timbres become organic wood, crystalline glass transforms into weightless air chimes. The sound design becomes a living metaphor: just as The Fool trusts the universe despite not knowing where the path leads, the listener learns to trust the sonic journey despite not knowing what each action will produce. This is Wolf's concept of "sub creation" made audible, a world where the rules themselves are discovering what they are [8]. 4.3 The Moon (XVIII): Perceptual Ambiguity The Moon embodies illusion, dreams, and the unconscious, often depicted as a night scene where perception is uncertain [26]. Its sonification creates a liquid dream-space in which timbres shift constantly and sources blur into reflections. Detuned drones, filtered noise, and reversed water sounds produce unstable textures, while whispered vocal tones and oscillating filters reinforce ambiguity [31,25]. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 629 T. Czuper Spatial design intensifies this instability: sounds orbit the listener, diffuse rather than localise, and dissolve into reverberant haze. Instead of clarity, perception is suspended between inner and outer realities. The result is an acoustic world of perpetual ambiguity, mirroring the archetype’s themes of dream, illusion, and transformation [12]. My implementation creates perceptual confusion through psychoacoustic phenomena. As competing streams vie for coherence, the listener oscillates between exclusive interpretations, classic auditory 'multistability' [31]. The texture's gradual spectral unfurling exemplifies Smalley's 'emergent continuum' morphology, deepening the card's dreamlogic [25]. Inner voices leak outward, outer sounds seep inward, the boundary between internal and external completely dissolves as binaural inside your head sounds suddenly spatialise into the external world, while distant environmental sounds migrate into skull space, becoming internal whispers. 5 Analysis 5.1 Critical Reflection on the Methodology As a case study documenting one practitioner's approach, this work makes no claims to universal mappings or definitive sonic translations of archetypal content. The absence of listener studies means the effectiveness of these sonic worlds remains untested beyond my own artistic assessment. The ritual extraction process, while personally meaningful and grounded in extensive study, introduces subjective elements that other practitioners might interpret differently. Future empirical validation could explore whether these aesthetic choices resonate across diverse listeners and cultural contexts. The specific frequency choices, spatial mappings, and production parameters described here inevitably reflect my own artistic sensibility. While I ground these decisions in semiotic and psychoacoustic principles, other listeners may interpret or prioritise different qualities. Formal listener studies will be needed to determine whether these mappings resonate consistently, or whether alternative interpretations emerge across diverse audiences. The Western esoteric framework of Tarot may not translate seamlessly to other cultural contexts, suggesting the need for collaborative approaches when applying this methodology to other archetypal frameworks. While the Tarot provides a rich symbolic system, it is also embedded in a Western esoteric tradition. This cultural framing means that the archetypes explored here may not carry the same resonance across other traditions. Future work could therefore explore how similar sonic translations might operate in non-Western symbolic systems to assess both differences and shared archetypal dynamics. The three-stage pipeline - archetype extraction, acoustic mapping through production, and spatial staging - proved robust in practice, offering a reproducible scaffold while leaving space for artistic intuition. Yet evaluating an aesthetic sonification demands more than task-accuracy tests; it must also consider experiential and artistic qualities. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 630 The Sound of Archetypes Comprehensive evaluation should therefore balance performance metrics with aesthetic response [4]. To that end I assess the work on three axes: symbolic fidelity, perceptual impact and practical reproducibility. The world-building approach particularly succeeds in creating coherent experiential environments where every sonic element serves the archetypal narrative [8]. By treating production techniques as primary tools for psychoacoustic mapping rather than mere technical implementation, the methodology acknowledges the creative reality of sound design, that compression, EQ, and spatial processing are not neutral tools but active participants in meaning-making. However, several challenges emerge. The balance between systematic approach and intuitive ritual elements remains delicate. While I document specific frequency choices, spatial coordinates, and production parameters, the initial "energetic qualities" extraction relies heavily on embodied, subjective experience. This raises questions about reproducibility, would another practitioner, sitting with The Tower, arrive at 16Hz through their ritual practice? The methodology attempts to bridge this gap by grounding intuitive insights in psychoacoustic research, but the translation between felt experience and acoustic parameter remains partially opaque. The tension between objectivity and subjectivity pervades the entire project. While research often links infrasonic frequencies with feelings of unease and binaural beats with altered states of awareness, these effects are not uniform; cultural context and individual physiology can moderate, amplify, or even negate such responses. The very selection of the Tarot as source material embeds Western esoteric traditions into the work, potentially limiting its cross-cultural applicability. How do we validate successful sonic translation when the criteria themselves emerge from aesthetic rather than empirical grounds? The absence of formal listener studies in this initial phase leaves these questions productively open while highlighting the need for future empirical validation. The three case studies reveal how distinct sonic physics can embody archetypal energies. The Tower's deterministic collapse, The Fool's quantum possibility, and The Moon's permeable reality each create profoundly different listening experiences through their world-building rules. Emergent patterns suggest certain psychoacoustic mappings may be archetypal, descent for catastrophe, dissolution for mystery, lightness for potential, yet each world maintains its own internal consistency and unique acoustic signature. This balance between systematic approach and archetypal specificity demonstrates how worldbuilding can serve both structural coherence and symbolic differentiation, allowing each card to inhabit its own sonic universe while remaining part of a larger methodological framework. 5.2 Symbolic Fidelity Archetypes provide a coherent symbolic framework, yet interpretations inevitably vary across cultures and individuals. Psychoacoustic cues such as infrasound or dissonance can trigger broadly consistent responses, but symbolic resonance remains conditioned by cultural background and personal association. As a result, this sonification cannot be treated as universally fixed; their meaning remains contingent on cultural and individual interpretation. Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on CMMR, London, UK, Nov. 3-7, 2025 631