| Art & Technology |
 |
| - Synaesthesia |
| Art & Technology |
|
| - Synaesthesia |
In 1995, another Australian painter made the same career cross-over - moving
in the opposite direction to De Maistre, Domenic De Clario the painter became
De Clario the musician. In a series of events, he played amplified music to
his audience, though he remained hidden as if overcome by stage-fright. Maybe
deliberate strangeness camouflaged uncertainty, and all would have been confusion
had not De Clario expounded his beliefs in pamphlets of purple prose. He outlined
a gestalt similar to De Maistre's - both used colour-music codes where Newton's
spectral colours and the white-note scales of Western music were aligned in
order of increasing frequencies.
De Clario advertised his colour-music code as a means to self-improvement,
just as De Maistre had once used colour for psychiatric therapy. As if justified
by these supposed benefits, each artist sought a broader platform from which
to disseminate his views. De Maistre had attempted to re-release his colour
charts in England and to apply his theory to ballet and film. Similarly, De
Clario abandoned the more passive medium of painting to involve his audience
in a group experience, as if it were good for them.
Their movements away from painting masked a vital issue -
that the medium of painting, while ideal for the display of colour, cannot accommodate
the fourth dimension, time. The ancient Greeks recognized this limitation and
held that only through movement and time could the highest moral values be expressed.
As a result, dance and music were held in high esteem while painting had less
consequence. The lowly status the Greeks accorded to painting have dogged the
visual arts ever since: the colour-music codes of De Maistre and De Clario have
done nothing to redress this inequity. While they gave colour equivalents for
individual notes, they provided no mechanism for translating the flow of music.
The later paintings of De Maistre failed to disclose the nature of music or
to render equivalent sensations, but functioned as esoteric and private music
manuscripts. Conversely, colour applied to music, dance and film is rarely more
than an adjunct to the main plot line, as portrayed through time and motion.
Ironically, we find ourselves back in the original Greek position, and poor
painting is no better off.
Film is often seen as the best way of conveying musical
ideas. Many visual artists who are also musicians find it the ideal medium to
express themselves. As time is the primary dimension of music, so too does film
have a duration. Where musical time is divided by rhythm, changing shapes and
colours on a projection screen can keep time to the accompanying
music.
From 1912 onwards, art films have been produced to
convey musical ideas with abstract animation. Their moving lines and changing
shapes were used to parallel the feeling and intent of particular scores, as
much as their musical structures. At first, form provided the metaphor for
rhythm (though sometimes it had additional significance, as an alchemic or
Theosophical symbol): colour played a subordinate role, partly because early
film was black and white and each frame had to be laboriously hand-coloured.
Generally, colour was not coded according to any given notes or keys, nor meant
to stipulate any synaesthetic relationships. Rather, rhythmic changes of light
and colour supplemented the forms to display musical content and character to
the best advantage.
With the advent of talkies, experimental filmmakers found
they could couple visual images to sound effects on the one strip of celluloid,
and were quick to exploit the correspondence. Lazlo Maholy-Nagy's "The Sound
ABC" of 1933 used the same visual symbols (letters, faces, signs and so on) on
the optical sound track as were shown on the screen. This 'light-hearted
experiment' showed that each image could produce its own unique sound.
Meanwhile, the Fischinger brothers in Germany and musicians in Russia (including
Rimsky-Korsakov) were experimenting with patterns and shapes to optically
generate musical tones. Soon, animators were using their own designs, freehand
or geometric, to make synthetic sound. Some photographed their work frame by
frame, others drew directly onto the film stock itself. Within the limits of
film technology, sound and image had become one. At the same time, Mary Ellen
Bute made the first abstract art films in the USA. Having helped Leon Theremin
present his thesis, "The Parameters of Light and Sound and Their Possible
Synchronization", she went on to create filmic impressions of music. At first,
Bute built her imagery around mathematical formulae but later used an
oscilloscope to choreograph a repertoire of forms to chosen scores.
The Whitney brothers, one a composer and the other an
abstract painter, also used external devices to aid them in the production of
animated films. They originally used pendulums to activate an optical wedge and
expose the sound track. Though the pendulums themselves produced no sound, they
were so finely tuned to harmonic lengths that a rich and complex music was heard
when the film was projected. Simple geometric forms supplied the imagery; these
were arranged across the screen and in sequence according to fixed rules,
derived from musical forms such as the cannon and the 12-tone
scale.
The Whitneys were fascinated by the periodic wave
forms of sound. By the mid-l960s, they had pioneered the use of computers to
create animations based on the mathematics of music:
The mathematical tendency reached some kind of culmination
with Tony Conrad's film "Flicker", of 1965. To barely audible electronic music
with a very rapid beat, a variable stroboscopic effect was projected as the only
visual element of the work. Alternating transparent and black frames produced
flashes of pure white, at rates moving in and out of the range of 8 to 16 cycles
per second, that corresponds to the alpha rhythms of brain waves. Though the
author theorized about harmonic relationships akin to music (with the standard
projection rate of 24 frames per second supplying the tonic), he admitted that
"Flicker" was conceived as "a hallucinatory trip through unplumbed grottoes
of pure sensory disruption." An hypnotic state, with illusionary colours and
images, is supposed to result, though many find the film purely
excruciating.
Since World War I, stroboscopes have been
used to treat battle fatigue, as a brain-washing technique, and in tests for
some epilepsy: it was appropriate that Conrad should add a legal waver to his
film, to avoid reparations if someone threw a fit. The reality of this danger
became clear in 1997 when a cartoon shown on Japanese television, including
several seconds of bright and rapidly-flashing red, white and blue lights, sent
over 700 children into convulsions.
The flicker effect was used for more benign ends in Paul
Sharits' 1968 film "N.O.T.H.I.N.G." By varying colour and tone from frame to
frame, he hoped to create rhythmic sensory impressions. Overall, colour
progressed through white, yellow, red and green, to blue, following the program
of the Tibetan Mandala of the Five Dhyani Buddhas. This tonal scale of colours,
from the lightest to the darkest, was meant to promote awareness and the highest
level of inner consciousness in the viewer. (His graphic device of mandala gave
different colours to either the Tantric meditation on the four chakras, or the
seven chakras of kundalini yoga. A Western derivation, the colour-music-chakra
code, uses a spectral array of seven colours rather than a tonal progression:
all, however, are aimed at achieving enlightenment.) But more than the symbolic
colours of the mandala, the accompanying sound of the mantra was paramount for
Sharits. The ultimate OM was represented, at blue, by a steady vibrational hum.
Though electronic sound supplanted music on the soundtrack, Sharits considered
the film as a composition, making music on a metaphoric level.
The work of abstract artists has always been in the
vanguard of animation, though it is usually overshadowed by populist cartoons
and video clips at the cinema and on TV. Only in the more personal (and
relatively new) world of the Internet has an interest in unity of sound and
vision regained prominence. Some of the most durable and elaborate sites on the
Net are devoted to systems analogizing sight and sound: many sport technical
wizardry and quote scientific theories, others rely on faith in a mystic,
holistic unity of all phenomena, but all presume the combined effect of musical
and visual stimuli has a profound human
resonance.
Traditional ROYGBIV colour-music codes can still
be found sheltering in web sites, usually as a list within a broad mythology
dealing with the I Ching, astrology and the like. There they flounder under
layers of obtuse meaning, inaccessible to all but the most literal-minded
readings. Generally, colour music is likely to be subsumed in mainstream
concerns, where the trend is towards less proscriptive methods, and more
inventive techniques, for uniting sight and sound.
Software for the PC can now produce sound from any image,
or vice versa, depending on the sophistication of the program and the
power of one's computer. The commonest visual read-outs range from simple graphs
(oscilloscope waves, moving colour-bars, etc.) to mandala forms of changing
colour and complexity. Sound can be produced from any scanned image, pixel by
pixel, according to colour; other programs can read and write music scores, as
well as orchestrate existing sound. A degree of personal choice if often allowed
- sound quality might be controlled, shape and colour preferences may be
stipulated.
But perhaps the most customized interactive
tool is IBVA, designed to harness the user's brainwaves, to navigate other
software, to manipulate other equipment and trigger both sound and image. Its
approach reflects the contemporary fascination, among scientists as much as
mystics, for biorhythms as a predictor of aesthetic responses. Some software
uses the irregularities present in heartbeats, or the coding of DNA sequences,
as a mathematical base for linking sight to sound. More traditional methods,
such as aligning cycles of musical fifths to a specific gradation of colour, are
sometimes chosen. Whatever method is used, it is the computer programmer at the
one end, and the individual user at the other, who dictate the audio-visual
result.
In the realm of multi-media, sensory fusion has just begun.
Artists, animators and musicians have been among the first to explore the
meeting of sight and sound. Their work across different disciplines has provided
a valuable impetus at times of change, in breaking with cloying traditions. The
best artistic results are often personal, even arbitrary interpretations, free
of rules that can inhibit expression. However, some old theories have proved
remarkably tenacious. Ideologies for reconciling the senses, through mathematics
and spirituality, re-emerge time and again - despite technical and philosophic
innovation. The colour-music code, with its sterile arrangement of spectral
colours and a white-note scale, is one antiquated idea that is never far below
the surface. Some of its major tenets influenced early animated film, even
though colour had less theoretical importance than form as an equivalent for
music. Paradoxically, it often appears in painting, as a transcription code for
achieving the impossible - accommodating music in a medium with no
time-frame.
One would think that computing, with its
mathematical base and audio-visual capabilities, would be the ideal medium for
colour music to flourish. And flourish it should, without the imposition of a
dogmatic code. The mathematical codes (some of them the usual colour music
formulations) that form the basis for earlier software, are likely to be
surpassed; their refined concepts are likely to prove limiting in general
applications Changes inside the computer and screen will dictate how sound and
colour are produced. Flexible software would incorporate these elements in
multipurpose programs, driven by the new methodology rather than based on old
theories. Commercial considerations, as well as technical sophistication, will
cater to public demand, for popular products that maximise results with the
least effort. Codes per se seem to be a disadvantage in the long run.
Hopefully, computer users will take inspiration from the abstractionists and
animators of the 20th century, to make open and unfettered explorations of
colour and music.
One field that could well do with a cross-disciplinary
approach, to which general consideration of the principles of colour and music
could apply, is the profession of architecture. After all, to paraphrase Goethe,
architecture is frozen music; rhythm is mimicked by the repetition of structural
elements and a passage of time is marked when people pass through and around a
building. Understanding music, its melody, harmony and so on, could but inform a
designer's approach to structure, building mass, and streetscapes. Colour for
buildings, whether in natural finishes or artificially applied, could be more
nicely designed with time in mind, supplementing changes in volume and shape
with colour changes redolent of the drama, variety and subtlety of music. Garish
ornament and arbitrary styles, that are too often the only embellishments to the
basic utility of a building, might be avoided by a more transcendent approach to
design: consideration of musicality and the use of colour could only enliven our
grim, grey cities.
The Pompidou Centre in Paris is one rare
example of a public building with a strong colours on the exterior. Its popular
appeal belies the difficulties its architect, Renzo Piano, experienced getting
his design off the ground: he spent a full year justifying the colour scheme to
Parisian taste-mongers, who had opted for shades of Eiffel Tower grey. A
starting point for the palette of colours, used to pick out the Centre's
external conduits and ducts, was the colour legend commonly used on working
drawings, to indicate services and utilities on the plan. Using the standard
colour code of engineers could be rationalized as a logical devolution of the
building process, whereas a client might find it more difficult to swallow the
seeming irrelevance of a colour-music code. The latter code only comes into its
own when music is incorporated as an element of the built
environment.
On a small scale, theorists and technicians
have already begun to explore building as a medium for audio-visual design. One
prescient example was Le Corbusier's design for the Philips pavillion at the
Brussels world fair in 1958. Amplified music and rhythmically-orchestrated light
and colour created a virtual environment to supplement the built form. Corbusier
extended his idea of architecture beyond mere building to a synthesis of
sensations bound by cosmic harmonies:
Despite the attention colour music has already received, it
has not yet provided a visual, painterly equivalent of the composer's method (or
vice versa), nor has it uncovered a tangible connection between various
creative impulses. Partly, this gap must be caused by the blind emphasis placed
on esoteric codes, that obscure the merits of colour and music alike. De Maistre
and De Clario fudged these aesthetic issues, relying instead on the acceptance
of their colour-music codes to give them an alternative credibility. The
rational virtues of Newtonian optics were supposed to rub off onto each system
(De Clario went to great length to draw on yet more science to validate his
code). By aligning their theories with known laws, the artists tried to justify
their codes, rather than prove them. Conversely, belief in the code was supposed
to soothe all intellectual doubts and authenticate an underlying spirituality.
Each artists saw his code's mystical virtue as its chief value. Operating
clearly within the neoplatonic tradition, they assumed that natural forces
(sound and light) are coordinated, indicating a single, presumably supernatural
source. De Clario went further in this regard, emboldened by increasing
tolerance of non-conforming religious views to declare his spiritual intentions
in a way De Maistre could hardly have envisaged.
To suggest
these emperors have no clothes might seem churlish, and risk accusations of bad
faith. Notwithstanding such protests, nor the personal testimony of their
acolytes, both systems reveal discrepancies that invite question. Both De
Maistre and De Clario tried to coordinate and quantify the effects of sight and
sound; when examined on their merits, their theories fail to find support in
scientific fact. They both follow the reductive methods of bad science, that
nowhere allow for any but the pre-ordained conclusions, so it is difficult to
give their procedures any credit.
At first, the area of synaesthesia looks likely to
establish the connection more objectively. The validity of any colour-music code
might be tested by correlating accounts of private and subjective responses to
colour and music, to see if any statistical connection could be formed. Each
synaesthete will report consistent responses - for example, music will be
accompanied by the same vision each time it is heard - but the experiences of
different individuals are not the same. Though responses to musical or coloured
input show some electrical activity in the brains of synaesthetes, establishing
the links between specific colours and sounds depends, as yet, on the subjects'
personal accounts of their internal experiences. Thus no general conclusions can
be drawn from synaesthesia, no colour-music codes devised or verified for wider
applicability.
Broad psychological testing, for reactions
to colour only, show a normal acceptance of red as hot and blue as cold;
otherwise, most colours elicit little reaction until they are seen in
conjunction with each other. No concrete measure of colour sensation is
available this way, and no connection to music can be induced. While the names
of individual colours also have associative meanings, these tend to be symbolic
and/or literal (white for purity, red as in bloody revolution). Words for
colours provide metaphor within language: their meanings give few direct clues
to the sensations colours provoke, let alone a musical equivalence: their sounds
may be more illustrative.
Perhaps painters could supply musical descriptions of
colour. When Whistler titled works as 'nocturnes' and Gaugin spoke of
orchestrating colour, they referred to the effect they wished to invoke as well
as to the approach they took. But once more, metaphor was employed, much as
visual similes were used in late romantic and impressionist programme music. It
may be that innovative work is impossible to describe, that the best likeness
can only be found in another, wordless language.
By
consequence, the association of colour with music appears to be irrelevant, but
at certain times and in certain quarters the connection is made. When this
occurs, the motive appears to be to confirm the spiritual, even where such
concerns might otherwise seem peripheral and remote. In Western philosophies,
the commonest procedure follows the neoplatonic pattern, which has become such a
habit of thought that its application becomes automatic and its correctness is
presumed. Even the Theosophical Society retained the essential classicism of
Newton's ROYGBIV when reworking the colour-music code in the late 19th. century.
The colour-music code of Roy De Maistre, too, was just such a learnt,
intellectual arrangement, in spite of any spiritual leanings he might have had.
Though De Maistre may have been a special case by virtue of synaesthesia, his
paintings were primarily exercises in applying his code. In the end, they are
unreliable representations of internal experiences - the coded structure
intervened to cloud any true picture of colour-music sensation, producing
outcomes according to rule.
The works of De Maistre and De Clario emerged from similar
milieus. The spiritualist concerns of De Maistre's time are mirrored in the
occult interests of the present New Age movement. Then as now, preoccupation
with the spiritual inspired blind beliefs - colour music was embraced with
religious zeal and codes evolved to serve as dogma. In the 1930s, a
Hindu-inspired variation became so influential that it has become the most
commonly accepted interpretation of colour-music codes today. De Maistre did not
include this important modification in his approach at the time: perhaps he was
influenced by contemporary European art, or constrained by his new-found
Catholicism. In any case, the oriental modifications are just another veneer,
superimposed on colours and musical notes whose arrangement has changed little
since Newton's time. De Maistre's colour-music code is of this durable type.
Though three-quarters of a century has elapsed since he first proposed it, the
basic structure, with few alterations, is still accepted by many in contemporary
Australia and elsewhere.
Niels Hutchison, Melbourne, 1996-2000.
Plate 1: ARRESTED MOVEMENT FROM A TRIO, Roy De Maistre, 1934.
Though the texts do not
mention it, these two paintings appear to be based on the same musical subject.
Their ruled structures, differing little in either version, seem to represent
time (on the horizontal axis) and pitch (vertically). The 24 vertical stripes
could be seen as quavers, giving a common time signature and four beats in each
of the three bars. The middle bar seems to be the focus of De Maistre's
attention; a run or arpeggio of eight quavers ascends in the treble, while a
descending figure of crotchets is repeated every two beats in the bass. This
rhythm is echoed by repeating the run of colours in the treble - though these
colours, when decoded, could not supply the smooth rise in pitch intimated by
the gradual slope of their ascent. The paintings' titles only hint at their musical source:
the overall key of green (D major or minor) may only apply across the three
bars, or even to a mere portion of the phrase. Few Beethoven Trios have the
required key and time signatures, and none contains bars resembling these.
Perhaps this is because the attribution to Beethoven - a note appended to the
work after De Maistre's death - was faulty. The music could well be by another
composer. Likewise, the phrase may come from a trio in the third movement of any
sonata-form composition (including symphonic works), instead of a so-called Trio
written for three instruments. In any case, the vagaries of De Maistre's methods
obscure rather than reveal his musical source of inspiration, in spite of the
literality of geometry and colour-music code. The development of this work sees De Maistre moving away
from any spontaneous reaction to music and towards a more contrived outcome,
meant to be appreciated primarily for its visual merit. The preliminary work
is rather understated compared to the final version of the painting. The latter's
enriched colour adds to a florid effect common to many of De Maistre's later
paintings, while tonality is used to throw separate musical voices into relief.
The resultant chiaroscuro achieves a limited three-dimensional effect, compared
to the flatter patterning and more abstract spirit of the earlier version.
While the central bar's
colouration is fairly consistent across the two works, reading them according to
De Maistre's colour-music code is still difficult. The blues are indeterminate
enough to be anything from D to F sharp; tertiary colours (browns and ochres)
are even more ambiguous - indeed, even his commercial colour charts failed to
distinguish them clearly. Add to this the inconsistency of De Maistre's own
hand-made colour charts, the non-spectral nature of paint pigments, and the
artist's tendency to vary colour for effect, and it becomes impossible to
reconstruct the music from either painting.
Musical meaning is stressed by graphic elaboration. With symbolic
realism, an indian red is confirmed as B flat, where De Maistre inscribes the
chevrons appointed to that note on his colour wheel. Similarly, arcs stamped
onto green indicate D: its combination with B flat is consistent with the key
of D minor. The reworking of blues/indigos as greens (especially in the stripes
to the left of the central bar) suggests that De Maistre at first presumed a
key of F (the relative major of D minor, that shares its B flat). The artist
appears to have, at first, misheard the musical mood of his subject, as a major
rather than a minor key. His ability to interpret music intuitively must be
thrown in doubt, even though he made technical adjustments for this oversight.