Monday, May 23, 2011

Synesthesia and Cymatics

This article about synesthesia really got me thinking about a lot of things. It was most interesting to me because I have never really put words to this sort of feeling before but at times I definitely visualize my art through the form of music or vice versa and my music is influenced somehow by some sort of natural or artificial work of art. So I don't necessarily know if that means I'm a synesthete, but I feel like I can relate somehow to what I was reading about it. The artist's quotes about how they pre-visualized their work or how some tune is reflected in their work work just made so much sense to me.

One part of the article I found to be particular interesting was about the color organs. The ability to convert musical tones into color is very fascinating because it opens up a whole new world of artistic capabilities. To me, music is already made more powerful when linked with a graphical or color stimulus. To then make that color stimulus one that is appropriately matched to the tone would boost that musical experience by a lot in my opinion.

This idea is also made more powerful when linked to the idea of Cymatics. After learning about the idea of cymatics I was very intrigued. Maybe this is because I have always been curiously interested in fractal patterns and sacred geometry, but to me cymatics felt very similar. The idea that music could actually produce a distinct pattern based on its frequency got me thinking about shows where VJ's perform along with bands. I thought of how cool it would be if the images being shown were the actual cymatic pattern from the song being played while it was playing. Then to take it a step further, the colors of the pattern could reflect the notes of the song similar to a color organ. If this were possible I feel like the synesthesia would just be un-avoidable and the audience would have some sort of sensory orgasm. Or maybe just smile a lot, but the point is that it would be a very good experience.

Reaction to first film