  Sound-shape associations, a subset of cross-modal associations between the
auditory and visual domain, have been studied mainly in the context of matching
a set of purposefully crafted shapes to sounds. Recent studies have explored
how humans represent sound through free-form sketching and how a graphical
sketch input could be used for sound production. In this paper, the potential
of communicating sound characteristics through these free-form sketches is
investigated in a gamified study that was conducted with eighty-two
participants at two online exhibition events. The results show that
participants managed to recognise sounds at a higher rate than the random
baseline would suggest, however it appeared difficult to visually encode
nuanced timbral differences.
