Another valuable contribution to the field of audiovisual scholarship from the extensive Oxford Handbook series, The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (OHSIDM) addresses an impressive range of sound and image subjects across a multitude of digital platforms. The emphasis on digital technologies distinguishes this publication from the similarly focused Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics (OHNAA), and results in an exciting variety of scholarly contributions ranging from the more familiar subjects of film and video game music and sound design, to public screens, immersive theatre, pornography, app albums, media visualisation, and all things Gaga. The generous 12-part structure of this well-presented volume reflects not only this broad range of subject matter, but also the diversity of expertise, style and methodology represented by the many contributors.

Despite the division of the 42 chapters, surprising and productive resonances are generated across the seemingly self-contained and precisely described sections. For example, Dibben's account of her work as a collaborator on Björk's Biophilia app album (Chapter 39) and Miller's theorisation of music-oriented video games (Chapter 30) both suggest that these types of digital media have the potential to revive modes of attention that are commonly thought to have been eroded by the ubiquity and constant advancement of technology in modern society. In her discussion of the commitment players have to progressing through the levels of Guitar Hero, and the reward system that spurs them on to improve, Miller implies that the game teaches the kind of commitment and concentration more commonly associated with learning a traditional musical instrument – that you only get better with practice. Similarly, Dibben notes, in her observations of people's responses to the Biophilia app, that this digital album form ‘encourages immersion in the audiovisual experience and attention to sound – in effect, a (re)new(ed) listening mode’ (p. 692). Both examples contradict the prevailing arguments that consider these forms of entertainment as teaching and engendering increasingly distracted modes of listening and attention.

These sorts of thematic and interpretative connections are made more explicitly in the four ‘dialogue’ sections of the book. These sections punctuate the rhythm of the book with tightly focused essays addressing specific subjects. The first dialogue (Part II) is between Cubitt (Chapter 5) and Straw (Chapter 6) on the subject of ‘Screens and Spaces’. The way in which Straw's chapter is a direct response to Cubitt's works very well, offering thoughts not just on the content and argument of Cubitt's chapter but also additional flavours to the debate. Straw's discussion of the history of lighting cities and the opposing simultaneous drives towards monumentalism and ‘things-seen’ creates a useful and thought-provoking comparison with Cubitt's three screens – particularly the big screen and the handheld device. Structured differently, with no intertextual engagement between the authors, another dialogue (Part VIII) revolves around a single case study: Source Code (2011). The three contributors, Stewart (Chapter 27), Cubitt (Chapter 28) and Buhler (Chapter 29) take strongly individualistic approaches to their study of the sound and image relationships of the film. Stewart's discussion considers the reflexive aesthetic created by the temporal loop of the narrative, the disembodied voice and the communicative functions of the various technologies employed, while Cubitt convincingly relates ecocritical notions of ecology and networks to this time-looped portrayal of human existence sustained by and reliant on technological systems. Buhler, on the other hand, closely reads the soundtrack of the opening and closing title sequences through a discourse of mythology and capitalism, interpreting the ‘uncanny’ repetition of the opening music at the end as a signal of the continuing relentless repetition of the ‘source code’.

There is a strong focus on sound design throughout the book. Likening the experience of the immersive theatre production, Sleep No More, to the experience of a videogame, Herzog (Chapter 13) describes sound's function in achieving this. She writes that the sound cues ‘subtly encourage participants to move in particular directions’ (p. 203), and that they help the performance ‘vignettes [feel] precisely like videogame “cutscenes”’ (p. 204). Coulthard (Chapter 8) proposes that ‘dirty sound’, such as the use of drones, in the post-dolby digital surround sound era has become a ‘thematically and aesthetically charged trope’ for New Extremist films. She writes that the genre ‘simultaneously relies on and thwarts the quiet technologies of digital sound in order to attain an aural impact on par with its visual extremism’ (p. 115). In a similar vein, Chapman (Chapter 18) cites the recurring high-pitched ringing in Children of Men (2006) as ‘an emotional texture’ (p. 293), which he identifies as a crucial element of the film's ‘sonic architecture’ (p. 292). The ‘dirtiness’ or enigma of noise is theorised by Marks (Chapter 7), through her compelling formulation of enfolding-unfolding aesthetics, as the sound of the infinite – that which we have not decoded or ‘unfolded’. Strongly advocating for the role of the artist in society, she writes, ‘as they are less bound to convention’ artists ‘are especially good at making and identifying alternative unfoldings [of information from the infinity of noise]’ (p. 106). She contrasts this with the dominating capitalist powers of companies like Google, through which ‘the teeming infinity of the world is quantified and commodified before it reaches our perception’ (p. 106).

Like OHNAA, there is a password-protected companion website which provides access to video clips discussed by certain authors. However, the site is only used to support three of the 41 chapters, which is surprising given the subject matter of the book and the high number of instances in which authors refer to certain scenes or sections from a film or video game, etc. Obvious copyright issues aside, the website, in my opinion, is a highly undervalued resource which should have been more consistently and thoroughly exploited to provide a more coherent companion to the book. However, the gesture towards utilising a digital platform in this way must be seen as a positive one, and hopefully future publications will develop the idea more profitably.

This small criticism aside, The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media provides another invaluable contribution to the fields of audiovisual or sound and image scholarship. It will no doubt come to be regarded in the very near future (if it is not already) as essential reading for students, teachers and scholars alike. The breadth of the subject areas covered, the diverse range of scholarly expertise demonstrated by the contributors, and the ways in which key themes weave throughout chapters are the great successes of this volume.