THE CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN

SOUND AND LIGHT AND COLOUR-MUSIC:

SKB "PROMETEI"

Paulo Quadros

University of Glasgow

1984

With appreciation for Winnie Marshall’s support

PREFACE

The study of the relationships between colour and sound has generated more or less inconsistent results right from its beginnings. This has been due to a number of reasons.

With very few exceptions there has been a remarkable lack of direction, an abundance of cross-purposes within the various discussions of the subject and a resultant lack of clear conclusions which has held back any possible developments in this field.

The aim of this dissertation is to put into perspective the main findings and the main currents of thought regarding the correlations between sound and colour, its meaning and applications with emphasis on the work done by the Russian group SKB "Prometei".

The dissertation presupposes an acquaintance with A.B. Klein’s "Colour Music, the Art of Light" 1.

This book comprises an unbiased and exhaustive survey of most, if not all, the developments in the field of study of music in relation to light, up to the date of its publication. Klein gives a complete description of the most important theories in the field, covers proposals from Aristotle up to 1926, including ideas by musicians, scientists, painters and psychologists.

He analyses the theories based on the physics of the sound and light and tackles philosophic and aesthetical problems imposed by an art involving light and sound; he also analyses the problems and practicability of colour-music as an independent art form, discusses the art of stage lighting with its theories and technical practices as related to the art of light including apparatus such as cloud machines and special effects. In his survey the author mentions all the colour-music instruments ever built and some of their diagrams and descriptions.

The book ends with a vast bibliography covering publications from Aristotle's "De Sensu" (332 BC) in chronological order up to 1925.

Some familiarity with Lawrence Mark's "The Unity of Senses - Interrelation among modalities” 2 is also quite useful although the dissertation will briefly cover some of the points put forward by this author.

1 Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1926; London (held at the Westminster Public Library)2 Academic Press; 1978; London

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The book is also a survey but concentrates on the psychological aspect of the colour/sound relationship. In it, Lawrence Marks, probably the most knowledgeable modern author on the subject, includes the main current schools of thought which try to explain the phenomenon of inter-relationships of senses, as well as describing and analysing some of the modern experiments, some of the aesthetical problems imposed by the use of this correlation in art, sound symbolism in poetry, etc.

Both Marks and Klein have the advantage of clarity resulting from their ability to give the facts without trying to influence the reader with their own personal views.

Firstly, we need to be clear about some of the ideas and definitions used in the examination of this topic, since they have been used indiscriminately by practically all who have written about it, a fact which is responsible for many of the misconceptions.

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A small minority of people experience a curious sensory blending, where stimulation of a single sense activates one or more of the other senses. To these individuals (synaestetes) a voice, for instance, may take on colours, tastes and/or smells. This phenomenon is called "synaesthesia", a general term embracing all forms of cross-relationships of the senses. The phenomenon has apparently existed as long as human consciousness itself. In the Golden Age of Greece, Aristotle was aware of synaesthesia and commented on it. In our time, previous to the 20th century, there were already several books and more than one hundred papers on synaesthesia 3.

At the 1890 International Congress of Physiological Psychology, a committee was organised to standardise the terminology employed in the study of synaesthesia and it was only since then that it has become acceptable to study this area 3 .

To those of us who are not ourselves synaesthetic the very phenomenon may seem strange and often dubious but some synaesthetic individuals - even adults - express genuine surprise to discover that their way of perceiving is not universal. Others, by contrast, are too acutely aware of the distinction between synaesthetic and non-synaesthetic perceptions; in "The Unity of Senses", p. 84, Marks reports that some people have commented to him "how they learned to suppress any hint of synaesthesia, occasionally hiding it even from friends and relatives, and, in a few instances, seeking medical help".

Synaesthesia has been reported to be more common in children than in adults by almost two or three to one. The rates of occurrence of the phenomenon in adults range from 9% to 13%, according to various independent researches. J. Philippe reported that 20% of 150 blind subjects had coloured hearing and generally claimed that this ability had developed following their loss of vision 4.

According to Prof. Albert Wellek 5 and according to the main current theory, all of the human senses were, in fact, one single system at one time. The study of evolution enables the senses to be traced back to a common root - a prehistoric sensory form or primitive awareness of which the original components have only separated and become individual senses in the course of the ages. But "even at this latest stage of human development the psychological mechanisms still allow transition or re-ordination from one impulse track or sense department to a neighbouring track or department. This applies even if the two departments concerned are subjectively quite different from each other".

Most frequently encountered in synaesthesia is the form known as "colour-hearing" 6 and, less frequently "sound-vision". These are examples par excellence of synaesthesia, in this case known as "binary perception" (because it involves only two of the senses). Colour hearing has the acoustic system as the trigger of the phenomenon - in other words a sound heard is associated with a colour or colours.In sound-vision (a counterpart of colour-hearing) the synaesthetic connection is in the other direction, which means that when a colour is seen a sound appears that has no point of origin in the "objective stimulus pattern". In both, the triggering ("primary

3 Kowalcyk: The Associative Relation Between Triadic Musical Chords and Colour4 Philippe J.: "Resume d'une observation d1audition coloree"; Revue Philosophique; 1893; pp.330-

3345 Wellek A.: "Colour-hearing and its significance for the visual arts"; Palette; No 23,,; 1966; pp.15-246 Also called "oratio colorata", "Farbenhören", "audition coloreé", or "psycho-chromasthesia".

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sensation") and the triggered secondary (or "sympathetic") sensations bear the stamp of the sensation itself.

The secondary sensations may be as real as they are in the immediate perception process (i.e., as if they were primary sensations themselves) producing something similar to hallucinations, what is called "eidetic imagery". This binary perception in the literal sense of the word is relatively rare but there are identical links between primary sensation and secondary quality of no more than imaginary nature or even links which are not between the real and the imaginary but associative links within the realm of imagery alone.

Thus, there is clearly a need to draw a theoretical distinction between "true" (i.e. actually perceived synaesthesia) and "false", purely imaginary or emotionally conditioned synaesthesia. But in trying to do this we come across a problem: in the experiments of various researchers it has been demonstrated that it is not always possible to draw these distinctions and that they can only be valid in extreme cases.

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In reality there are a large number of transitory forms lying between "true", eidetic forms and purely imaginary forms 7.

In this respect, authors such as Scholes in his article in the Oxford Companion to Music do much harm to the accurate understanding of the subject with the undertone of scepticism which permeates his discussion. Klein's position regarding the colour and sound relationship is quite misrepresented since his book seems to be Scholes1

main reference. Klein's view of the subject may be summarised as follows:

"We may naturally expect that man will develop a larger capacity to enjoy relations and discern significance in regions of perception now unknown... The immensely increased control over natural forces which the applied science of the last hundred years has conferred upon us, must of necessity have modified the character of artistic creation by its effect upon the material means of expression"

W.S. Coleman 8 distinguishes four degrees of secondary sensations (which he calls "photisms"):

1) Photisms located somewhere behind the eyes or within the skull (i.e., imaginary photisms);

2) A background of colour appearing behind actual objects in the environment, though not obscuring them;

3) Photisms projected spatially in the direction of the source of the auditory stimulus;

4) Those visual impressions which are so brilliant as to obliterate the environment, or else to blend with its colours and thus engender a totally different hue.

This seems to be the only attempt to subdivide the gradation between associated and eidetic imagery, so the problem of discrimination between "true" and "false" synaesthesia remains unsolved.

All attempts to prove the existence of fixed, invariable and natural relations between the sensations of sound and colour have, so far, failed scientifically. This, of course, does not imply that those relations do not exist, since all attempts to disprove it have similarly failed.

These attempts have in common the fact that they are based on the external physical characteristics of colour and sound which are theorised and demonstrated according

7 Dr. Fraser-Harris (Edinburgh Medical Journal; vol 18; p.529) coined another term to describe one of the forms of synaesthesia, namely "Psychochromasthesia", By "synaesthesia" he understands "coupled sensations, as when sounds, voices etc, arouse colour (e.g., colour hearing). By "psychochromasthesia" he means colour perception". A colour concept is a "psychochrome"; when, in the case of a coloured concept, the exteriorising is the feature, this may be called a "chromo-psychogram"

8 Colman: "Further Remarks on colour-hearing"; Lancet I; 22; 1894

to what we can perceive, without a knowledge of the inner mental processes which enables us to recognise those physical properties in the external world. The retina alone is not able to recognise colours, as the eardrum alone is not enough to recognise pitches. It is not quite clear yet how the brain processes the information sent by the eyes and the ears (or by any sense receptor, in fact) and until that is known, there is no sense in proclaiming or denying the existence of physical correspondences between sound and colour. They might be different manifestations originated from a common source or be the same type of triggering signal after they go through the sense organs.

Vibration is a common denominator, but a literal "translation" of sound into colour or vice-versa based on this fact has proven unfruitful mainly for the fact that researchers look for a 2:1 frequency relationship (i.e. octave relationship). Although this 2:1 relation, occurs many times within the audible sound band of 16 to 20,000 cps, this is not really achieved between the extremes of the visual spectrum. Some authors 9

immediately jump to the conclusion that this proves the non-existence of analogies between sound and colour. Such writers forget that octave equivalence is a completely artificial concept only valid when applied to an equally artificial musical system.

The gamut of sound is as continuous as that of light. Octave equivalence came about only because of the human's ability to perceive and distinguish small variations within that band between 16 and 20,000 cps. In other words, we subdivide the vibrations-continuum in the manner we do, not because of their absolute physical properties but because we perceive them in the way we subdivide them.

For the same reason, it is barren to look for an answer to the question of fusion of colours and non-fusion of sounds based on physical laws. The fusion or non-fusion takes place within the mind itself, after it processes the data collected by the various sense receptors.

Having that in mind, we should rephrase the question. How can we "translate" colours into sounds or sounds into colours in a way that we can perceive it as such? This raises a second question: Why should we wish to translate one section of the spectrum, of perceived vibrations into another section? To this there are only two answers: either because of pure scientific speculation or because of our need for aesthetic fulfilment in the form of Art.

9 For instance, Felix Ganz in "Sound and Colour - critical remarks of a musician on sound colour relations"; Palette no 23; 1967

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Publications of experiments involving synaesthesia or colour/sound analogies have revealed a surprising lack of control of conditions, a lack of musical knowledge on the part of most scientists who attempt to apply their theories to music and a lack of scientific knowledge on the part of most musicians who attempt to apply scientific concepts to their art.

Associated with the first problem is the one of reference. Most researchers take the tempered scale nomenclature as the basis for their experiments.

For instance, Dr. R.W. Pickford10 relies for some of his conclusions on Jean Dauven's research (1970) which is based in turn on "notes" with frequencies different from those generally used in the present day tempered scale, and on the Pytagorian frequency ratios. Taking middle C as an example (standardised as 261.63 cps), Dauven's middle C is 264 (there are variations of up to ten cycles in some other notes) and Myers is 256 11.

Still regarding reference, although Myers took into consideration the differences in timbre in his results, most researchers have made indiscriminate use of instruments in their search for an explanation for synaesthesia and the correlations between colour and sound. When Scholes pointed out the discrepancies among the conclusions, he too, like the researchers, failed to realise the mistake of relying on false premises.

It may be true that there is a large discrepancy between Dauven's "C" which "is" green and Myers’ subject "A"s "C" which "is" rosy brown but the frequency of that note is 528 cps in the first case and 500 cps in the latter. Clearly two quite distinct pitches.

There are also attempts to compare modern results to those which have been reported in the last century or even before, without taking into consideration the differences in sound between old and modern instruments and the difference in the tuning of the scales throughout the history of music. For instance, in the middle of the eighteenth century most keyboards were tuned in mean-tone temperament rather than in equal temperament as they are today.

10 Pickford, R.W.: "Psychology and visual aesthetics"; Hutchinson Educational; 1972; London11 Myers, C.S.: "Experimental Psychology"; pp 26-30

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Mean-tone provides the player with a group of about a dozen "central" keys in which all the important chords are very much more in tune than they are on the modern piano. In remoter keys, F sharp minor or A flat major for instance, certain chords sound very dissonant and these may often include the tonic or the dominant of the key, which will produce quite a different reaction from the listener 12.

But even taking the above points into consideration and the inconclusive overall results, all the experiments if taken in isolation show that at least synaesthesia is a real phenomenon. There is a very interesting experiment which shows evidence of actual-physical changes occurring in the brain when sounds are heard. Cecilia Chu Wang gives a very detailed description of the effects of pitch intervals on brainwave amplitudes in the "Journal of Research in Music Education" 13

According to her findings, results of analysis from electroencephalogram (EEC) recorded while testing the pitch discrimination ability of fourteen musically trained university students, showed that EEC amplitude decreased as pitch intervals became smaller. There was no change in the EEG amplitude when comparison pitches were at intervals of a whole tone (higher or lower) from the reference pitch, but change did occur when the interval was diminished to a quartertone.

She did not experiment with intervals smaller than a quartertone but the results seem to point towards a greater change in the EEG amplitude as .the intervals are further diminished. If extended, this experiment would perhaps establish a connection between timbre and synaesthesia. Clearly some more research is required in this direction to establish any connections between those brainwaves and the perceptual process of the mind.

Sometimes non-synaesthetic individuals can experience synaesthesia through the use of drugs. Several of the consciousness-altering drugs, especially hashish, mescaline, and LSD are known to evoke synaesthesia at least on occasion. That this happens has one clear implication, namely that a capacity for true synaesthetic perception probably lies latent and dormant within most, if not all people, ready to come forth when properly catalysed 14.

12 For a detailed description of the effect of different forms of temperament in music refer to Thurston\ Dart’s book "The Interpretation of Music", Hutchison of London, 1978 (4th edition.) and also Dr. Lowery's book "The Background of Music" - Hutchison of London

13 Summer 1977; vol 25; No 2; pp 150-16414 Tart, C.T.: "On being stoned: a psychological study of marijuana intoxication"; Palo Alto: Science and

Behaviour Books; 1971 . Delay, J; Gerard, H.P.; & Racamier, P.C: "Les synesthesies dans l'intoxication mescalinique"; L'Encéphale; 1951 . Grinspoon, L: "Marijuana reconsidered"; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; 1971

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All of us may and do experience the correspondences of diverse senses in various degrees. Art forms like opera and ballet are intrinsically synaesthetic modes of expression. To perceive ballet it is necessary to integrate sight and sound so that, in John Keat's words

"eyesAnd ears act with that unison of sense which marries sweet sound with the grace of form" 15

Colours are not only bright or dark, deep or pale, but sometimes loud and soft as well as warm and cool.

Sounds have several spatial characteristics, for instance, their apparent location. But they also have another characteristic of location - one that is independent of where the sound comes from - namely the dimension of high versus low that is commonly known as pitch. According to Roffler and Buttier 16 "this is no mere spatial metaphor".

They found in their extensive study of the phenomenon that perceived height correlated directly with pitch in the congenitally blind as well as the sighted and in children so young that they seemed not to command the verbal concepts of high and low pitch.

There is also another property of sound which can be easily perceived. It is usually called apparent volume, which is not the same thing as loudness. Sounds differ not just in their subjective intensity (i.e., loudness) but also in the degree to which they appear to fill up space.

Loud, low pitched sounds appear most massive and seem to fill up a large volume of space.

E.R. Moul 17 claimed that both pure tones and coloured lights yield sensations that can be said to have "thickness". He concluded that "we are dealing not with unrelated perceptions of visual depth and auditory volume, but with an aspect of experience which is fundamentally the same whether mediated by the eye or by the ear", (p 559).

It was not until the nineteenth century that synaesthesia started being seriously studied, scientifically or otherwise. Many of the present misconceptions also stem from that period. The correspondences among the senses formed a vital part of the artistic development in that century and Charles Baudelair's poem "Correspondances" summarises quite well the spirit of the period:

" Perfumes, colours and sound intertwine and in particular by the perfumes fresh as children's flesh Sweet as oboes, green as prairies"

Another example of sound and colour correspondence in that century is found in Arthur Rimbaud's "Sonnet of the Vowels", which begins:15 From "Hyperion: A Vision"16 "Localisation of tonal stimuli in the vertical plane"; Journal of the Acoustical Society of

America; 1968; 43; pp1260-126617 "An experimental study of visual and auditory thickness"; American Journal of Psychology; 1930;

42; pp 544-560

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"A Black, E white, I red, U green, 0 blue, vowels, one day will I tell of your latent birth".

Rimbaud's lines are of particular interest because of the special role that speech plays in music. So far it seems that all attempts to translate sound into light have failed to take speech, especially vowels, as an integral part of the process.

Among the synaesthetes for whom musical notes produce visual images, it is rare to find much regularity or agreement about the relation between colour and pitch. Everybody tends to have his/her own scheme for ascribing colours to sounds.

Nevertheless, one point where virtually all synaesthetes agree is on brightness. Regardless of the hue, the higher the pitch, the brighter the visual image. If middle C evokes red, a higher C evokes a brighter red.

There is another analogy between sound and light, which also appears to be consistent. T.F. Karwoski and H.S. Odber 18 discovered a systematic relation between the shapes of synaesthetic visual forms and the tempo of the music: the faster the music, the sharper and more angular is the visual image.

This outcome is in line with findings of R.R. Willmann 19, who asked composers and students of musical composition to write music for each of several visual themes (e.g., a square; a rounded salboat-like shape; a squat, multipointed form, etc). As might be expected, each drawing produced a host of different musical compositions - but the compositions written for each visual theme also contained certain common features.

The angular and irregular drawings yielded louder sounds, faster tempos and syncopated rhythms.

Synaesthetic associations seem to be a very important element in all forms of art. There is a larger proportion than it is usually realised of artists who experience these associations in various degrees.

To Gounod, for instance, the French language was not so colourful as Italian, though finer in hue 20.

In 189A Colman wrote of a musician who after striking a single note on the piano, would be able to go home and tune his violin with absolute precision by the simple device of matching the colour-photism 21.

According to a quotation by MacDonald Critchley 22, when Liszt was appointed to Weimar as Kapellmeister, he bewildered his players at rehearsals by urging "... more

18 "Colour-music"; Psychological Monographs; 193819 "An experimental investigation of the creative process in Music"; Psychological Monographs ; 194420 Quoted by Fraser-Harris: "On psychochromasthesia and certain synaesthesia"; Eding. M.J.; 1905;

vol 18; p.52921 Colman, W.S.: "Further remarks on colour-hearing"; Lancet I; 2222 Critchley, M & Henson: "Music and the Brain"; William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd., London

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pink here if you please"; or by declaring: "that is too black", or "here I want it all azure".

Beethoven is reported to have associated colours to notes. Thomas Wood, a blind musician, described his own lifelong faculty of colour association as follows:

" It brings a definitive colour to single notes, to notes in groups, to movements; it changes the colour according to height or depth, scoring, key; over all this it lays a colour that goes with the work as a whole, and at times a shape is added which is just as fortuitous as the colours themselves" 23

23 Wood, T.: "True Thomas"; 1936; Cape; London

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Scriabin

Perhaps the best-known synaesthetic composer is Scriabin (or Scryabin) but he was by no means an extreme case. He and Rimsky-Korsakov associated colours to keys. Music gave Scriabin only a "feeling of colours"; only in cases where the feeling was very intense did it pass over to give an "image" of colour. Single notes to him had the colours of their tonality 24.

There is at least one documented case where Scriabin ’s music induced what is called "sporadic synaesthesia". Bowers wrote in his book on Scriabin 25:

" On two occasions I have seen radiant flashes of blinding colours and lights during performances of Scriabin's music. I was neither prepared for them, nor was I able to repeat them at any other time. They happened; I saw light unexpectedly and for no explicable or useful purpose. The experiences lasted for not more than a few seconds and were gone. They were quite different from a thrill of sensation, tears of pleasure, or usual emotions associated with beautiful music. I was more surprised than pleased. They have not recurred. But I have not forgotten them".

Philip Hales composed a piece with the title "The Song of Solomon" performed in Paris in 1891 which supposedly gave "simultaneous appeal to eyes, ears and nose" 26.

E.T.A. Hoffmann once bitterly suggested when Kreisler disappeared: "Perhaps he ... stabbed himself with an augmented fifth". On another occasion he confessed that the synaesthetic experience often arose only after he had had an overwhelming or prolonged association with music: "Not so much in dreams as in the condition of delirium which precedes falling asleep -particularly when I have been close to music - I find a blending of colours, tones and odours. It seems to me as if they were all produced through the same beam of light in some mysterious way and were obliged to combine together into a wonderful harmony" 27.

These are just a few examples. Practically all composers of the Romantic period had some sort of association between sound and light, music and painting. Many others in periods previous to and after that also associated colours to sounds (e.g., Weber, Mendelssohn, Schoenberg, A. Bliss, and others)

24 Mayers, C.S.: "Two cases of Synaesthesia"; British Journal of Psychology"; vol 4; 1914; pp 112-117

25 Bowers: "Scriabin"; Kodanska International Ltd., Tokyo; 2 volumes; 196926 Krehbiel, H.E.: New York Tribune; March 21st 1891. Quoted by A.B. Klein in “Colour-Music - the

Art of Light"; 1926; Crosby Lockwood & Son27 Werke 1: 56 quoted by Schafer, R.M.: "E.T.A. Hoffmann and music"; University of Toronto Press;

1975

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There are famous examples of music composed after paintings by such masters as Liszt ("The Battle of the Huns", after Kaulback's painting, 1857)» Mussorgsky ("Pictures from an exhibition", 1874), or Reger's "Four Tone Poems", after A. Böcklin, 1913.

We may also find the inverse, the conversion of sound and music into painting, or so-called "musical graphic representation" 28.

Among painters who were influenced by music we find Delacrois (in his colour theory), Turner (eg, “Symphony in White" ,"Nocturn"); Kandinsky ("Songs without words", "Fugue"); Matisse ("Jazz"); Klee ("The Twitter machine"); among others. A classical example of drawings and paintings that originate directly from synaesthetic visions is Kandinsky. We find him writing in his letter of 1915 29:

"I often imitate the deep notes of a trumpet with my lips and I see various combinations [of colours] which cannot be expressed in words and only unsatisfactorily with the palette."

These associations between colour and sound naturally gave rise to a new form of art, now best known as "colour music". There are basically two currents of thought which are the theoretical basis of this form of art. One advocates a real analogy between light and sound and the other advocates a subjective association between the two phenomena.

The first group may be further subdivided into smaller groups which concentrate on particular aspects such as frequency ratios (e.g., Newton, Aristotle, Castel), wavelength ratios (eg, Sir William Barret), etc.

The second could be subdivided into, at least, two sub-groups: one which makes use of psychological experiments to establish relationships between the various parameters of sound and light (e.g., brightness, intensity, etc) and another, which creates art subjectively, employing exclusively the aesthetic sense.

28 This expression was coined by a Viennese experimenter in this field, Oskar Rainer29 Eichner, Johann: "Kandinsky and Gabriele Mttnter"; 1957

Kandinsky

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These groups and subgroups can and often do cross each other’s borders when art is actually being created. Dividing the different approaches into groups helps to theoretically understand the more complex processes involved in the creation of colour-music.

Colour-music is still in its developing stage. Progress in this area has been hindered, although unnecessarily, by the unfruitful attempts to find analogies between sound and light, the expensive equipment required for the performance of this art form, and the general misinformation about the subject.

One of the leaders in the field of sound-colour in the West was Thomas Wilfred, the founder of the "Art Institute of Light" in New York. He never attempted to develop any analogy of sound and colour, but promoted "Colour-music" - later named "Lumia" - as an independent and expressive art from from about 1920. His choice of the term "Lumia" to describe his art was very fortunate for, like many of the so-called "colour-music" pieces, it was devoid of any aural effects of musical accompaniment. The original art of colour and sound has developed to the extent that this further differentiation has to be made.

Colour-music consists of an interacting of colour and sound, and properly belongs to the field of music; if light is introduced on its own, without any musical accompaniment, it is more closely related to painting, therefore to the field of Fine Arts. This distinction is necessary to give direction to further research, and could profitably be adopted by the world's leading group of experimenters in the field of sound and light as an art form SKB "Prometei"30.

The group made up of artists, musicians and engineers was founded in 1962 at the Kazan Aviation Institute, USSR, to develop the idea of "music-kinetic art" (as they call it) originated by the composers A. Scriabin and V. Shtcherbatchev and the artists V. Baranove-Rossine, G. Gidoni and others 31.

Initially the group clearly aimed at creating interaction between sound and light as it can be deduced from the material of their early performances and from their choosing "Prometei" as the name of the group. They created "Prometei I", a keyboard, or colour-organ, for controlling the projection of uniform areas of colour, on a translucent screen which was used for the group's performance of Scriabin's "Prometheus" in 1962 and Rimsky-Korsakov's compositions with image scores prepared by the group during the season 1963-64 32.

Some years later, in 1976, the spokesman for the group, B.M. Galeyev, described their primary objectives as being the development of the medium as a fine art 31.

30 Sometimes translated as Group Prometheus; SKB=Students' design office31 B.M. Galeyev: "Music-kinetic art medium: on the work of the Group "Prometei" (SKB)”, Kazan,

USSR; Leonardo, vol IX, No. 3, summer 197632 R. Korsakov did not provide a score for visual accompaniment but he determined the keys in his

operatic works by the colours mentioned in the text of the libretto or presented in scenes.

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There seems to be in the Soviet Union a very favourable attitude towards colour-music for SKB "Prometei" is not the only group to pursue the idea of the synthesis of musical and visual arts.

There are other groups working in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkow, Odessa, Tchkalovsk and many other towns. The movement was given even more impulse when colour-music was officially recognised and accepted as an art form in its own right on 21st of October 1967. Then, a plenary assembly of governing bodies of Russia's artists' unions and organisations dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, met at the Kremlin Congress Palace in Moscow.

The meeting was opened by Konstantin Fedin, first secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR, who set the optimistic mood in which the meetings were to be conducted in the opening lines of his speech:

"It became a custom to divide the fine arts and their masters into guilds and, when speaking about the affinity between their products, to have in mind their common subjects only. But the richer the painter's brush is, the more poetry there is in it, and one could hardly dispute the direct relationship between music and sculpture" 33.

The views of SKB "Prometei" are not shared by all researchers in the Soviet Union. K.Leontyev and the "Movement Group" have published material on their approach to using electronic and electro-mechanical systems for automatic coupling of visual and aural arts 34. This approach is radically different from that of SKB "Prometei". (see Appendix II).

33 Galeyev, B.M.: "Experiments with Light-Music of the Designers' Office "Prometheus"”; INTERFACE 3; 1974; pp 159-168

34 Leontye.v, K.: "Music and Colour" (in Russian; Moscow, Znaniye; 1965 "The Colour of Prometheus" (in Russian); Moscow, Znaniye; 1965

"Russian Movement Group"; Leonardo I; 1968; p 319

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According to Galeyev, the group believes that the essence of audio-visual music is more or less revealed by defining it as an art of "instrumental choreography". It is a dance of colourful figures that change their form, hue and brightness. Any art form is set up on the knowledge of certain rules; therefore it is only logical that researchers will seek the rules of the light-and-sound combination.

The first ideas of audio-visual music were based on the unjustified assumption (to Galeyev) that these unknown rules are laws of natural science. To create the new form of art it was considered sufficient to discover the universal algorithm of "translating" music into some visual phenomenon.

Moreover, it was suggested that the translation should be made by means of some automatic device. SKB "Prometei" considers that the problem of dubbing music by means of light is not of any aesthetic importance. Experimental colour-music performances by the group were based on this view from the beginning.

Compositions were produced according to a 'score’ written by a musician and/or an artist and were realised by a live performer rather than by an automatic device.

At this point it would be interesting to contrast A.B. Klein's and A.W. Rimington's attitudes towards mathematical formulae in order to "translate" colour into sound or vice-versa with that of Galeyev's and SKB "Prometei".

Klein's argument is that "the Arts are languages. One individual wishes to make another share his experience. The struggle to find the integral "Word" to embody the "Idea" is the essence of the artistic spirit. It follows that a mathematical formula is a work of art. Is it not? May not the aesthetic imagination find scope for its activity in a mathematical idealism".., "The colour-musician will be concerned with ideas which arise from the relation between the physical world revealed by light, the psychological structure of the visual organ, and the imaginative spirit of Man? 35.

Rimington as a researcher was mainly attracted by the physical analogies between sound and colour, but he also experimented freely, employing unlimited gradations of subjectivism. He concluded that both procedures have their advantages:

"... I, with many others, consider that with both colour and sound, the general resemblance in emotional effect is largely dependent upon proportion and contrast coupled with harmony and dissonance, that this makes the general analogy, still closer, and that there are other important points of resemblance. Whether or how far, the physical analogy between the spectrum-band and the octave holds good or has its counterpart in sensation is, it may once again be said, a secondary matter, and one open to question, but on broad lines I submit that deeper points of resemblance between the effects of colour and musical sounds upon us are so strong that they cannot be disputed by any unprejudiced person, though the support of this contention must depend to a great extent upon actual experiment and demonstration, and it is unavoidable that the question should be complicated by variations in individual capabilities of receiving emotional impressions either from music or from colour" 36

35 Klein, A.B.: "Colour-Music - the art of light"; Crosby Lockwood & Son;36 Rimington, A. Wallace:"Colour-Music: the art of mobile colour"; London 1911

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Having presented Klein's and Rimington's points of view, it is necessary to refute the argument of those, like M. Luckiesh, who hold that an art of colour-music can only evolve with the assistance of "fundamental experimental data obtained by psychologists well-versed in physics, physiology and psychology" 37. He was rash enough to predict that "this colour-music, if it ever does arrive, will be written by scientists"!

Turning back to SKB "Prometei's" work, the group does not completely exclude the possibility and necessity of analysis of audio/visual relations. Between the period of 1966 and 1971 they distributed a special questionnaire concerning colour-hearing and other kinds of light and sound relationships, among 25 000 members of artist's unions - writers, film artists, painters, sculptors and musicians - in the USSR. This survey was still being carried out in 1974 and has been gradually made available.

Galeyev draws our attention to the fact that results of the investigation are by no means to be used as a recipe for creative works; "being of scientific importance, they only bear an indirect relation to the group's artistic work". 38

Since SKB "Prometei" is practically the only research group which regularly publishes their results, it would be interesting to see how they approach the problems of sound and colour correlations which has been dealt with previously in this dissertation, and how they apply their theory to the creation of colour-music.

The group has worked with four basic types of correlations:

1. Correlations with Individual qualities of music (pitch, key, timbre, harmony)

Apart from the "colour organ" Prometei 1 which I have described above, the group developed two other instruments, "Prometei 2" and "Crystal".

These were constructed with the objective of obtaining experience with correlation of :

a) Light brightness with music volume (ie, loudness);b) Hues with timbre and chords;c) Structures of images with meter or rhythm;d) Spatial character of drawings with melodies.

With "Prometei 2" luminous non-figurative shapes were produced on a translucent screen by operating behind the screen arrays of many lamps equipped with filters.

With "Crystal" the brightness and colours of projected images could be varied by the operator by means of an image-producing device resembling a lighting-table usually found in theatres.

Performances with these two instruments were held to the accompaniment of compositions by M. Musorgsky, I. Stravinsky, F. Yrallin and P. Boulez;

37 Luckiesh's remark from the chapter "The Art of Mobile Colour" in his book "Colour and its applications". Refer also to "The Language of Colour", 1918, pp 262-282 by the same author

38 Galeyev, B.M. and Andreyev, S.A.: "Principles of constructing Audio-Visual Devices" (in Russian); Moscow: Energyia; 1973 . For more information about surveys and conferences on colour-music, refer to Appendix II

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of organ music and electronic music composed by means of the synthesizer A.N.S. in the Scriabin Museum.

2. Correlations with Musical Themes

Attempts were made, also employing "Prometei 2" and "Crystal" to correlate the appearance of mobile non-figurative images of changing colour with the themes of a musical composition. In the case of programmatic music such as Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" (in the sense that the group believes it to be programmatic), highly stylised images of human movements or of natural phenomena could be projected.

In their performances this was not done as the figurative kind used in cinema, for example, in Walt Disney's "Fantasia" for the same symphony.

Performances with the two instruments were given by the group in Kazan, between 1963 and 1967 but the above approaches were also used by other groups and individuals such as Pravdyuk at Kharkov, S. Zorin at Poltava, the group at the A. Scriabin Museum in Moscow and the "Dvizhenie" group in Tbilisi.

3. Correlations with different qualities and themes of music

This is a combination of approaches (1) and (2) above, which allows correlation of shapes and/or colours with musical themes as well as correlations with different qualities of music, but this time realised on film.

The first Soviet colour film employed for performance in the colour-music medium, "Prometheus" made by the group in 1965, used this combined approach. The first instruments were not of sufficient complexity and flexibility to allow an extensive exploitation of this approach.

4. The "Polyphonic (contrapuntal) Audio-Visual Integration approach

Instead of taking existing musical composition and then "dubbing in" the choreographed light following approaches one, two and three, the group prepared an original integrated music-image score in 1964, entitled "Mother". The music was composed by A. Yustin, a member of the group.

In 1969 they produced the film "Eternal Movement" incorporating fragments of Varese's "Electronic Poem". According to Galeyev, true integration was not achieved due to the fact that the music could be enjoyed without the visual presentations.

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They obtained better integration in the film "The Miniature Triptych" (1975) which utilised a musical composition by G. Sviridor 39. The group call this approach "polyphonic", meaning an independent development of audio and visual parts, analogous to the way instruments and themes interact contrapuntally in music. Thus sounds and kinetic images may be timed to occur either in unison or in counterpoint manner. The group believes that a satisfactory colour-music experience can be achieved only when polyphonic (contrapuntal) integration is introduced.

It is understandable that results of their research has led SKB "Prometei" to explore art forms other than colour-music in the strict sense, but such ramifications have detracted the group from their original ideals of developing an art involving music and colours. Nevertheless, their achievements in the art of "lumia" and other newly created art forms came about as a product of their research in colour-music and the results are quite interesting.

In 1967 they installed in a tower of the Kazan Kremlin automatically controlled equipment designed to project red beams of light as the clock of the tower strikes. The idea was to make visible the Russian metaphorical expression ‘crimson coloured chime’, which also means ‘rich and mellow chime’.

In 1968, for the purpose of illuminating an exterior wall of the Kazan Circus Building, they installed a system of floodlighting equipped with filters of different colours that could be changed in response to changes in temperature, wind speed and humidity of outdoors. This is a type of what is sometimes known as "environmental art", fairly well-known in the Western world, especially North America.

Environmental artists usually work with sculptures involving principles of kinetic-art. Unintentionally the group also points the way to a form of art based on music controlled by the environment.

They also designed a "light wall" in the restaurant of a hotel at Kazan, whose picture responds to the volume, timbre and range of pitch of music from a small orchestra. This is really a more sophisticated version of the same kind of equipment present today in discotheques around the world.

There are devices to be used in television, programme productions (the "Idel"); to provide "visual and sensorial gymnastics for the eye and ear" (the "yalkyn"); and to produce colour-music for home use with semi-automatic control.

39 The film was produced at the Kazan Newsreel Studio by Galeyez with a script prepared by I Vanechkina and A. Privin as the cameraman.

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As we can conclude from the above summary, the original setting down of the principles of colour-music does not exclude close relations between that and other arts. There seems to be very favourable conditions in the USSR for the development of the art, especially with the support of the government.

Colour-music in Russia is not restricted to a small circle of enthusiasts but can be experienced both in cinema-concert halls provided with colour-music equipment 40 and on the streets where water fountains provided with "light and music" medium are in operation in city squares at Yerevan, Krivoy Rog, Pyatigorsk, Mineralnye Wody and Rostov-on-Don 41.

In Europe and North America this form of art is only known to a very small number of people and publications about these unknown artists are very rare and difficult to come by. Such artists as L. Hirsohfeld-Mack and L. Moholy-Nagy in Germany, Z. Pesanek in Czechoslavakia, T. Wildred and F. Malina in the USA, N. Schaeffer in France, came in their experiments with dynamic light-painting very near to the colour-music produced by the "Prometheus" group.

Many of them accompany their cyclically repeated "light-compositions" by optional music corresponding to the respective mood. Formally all the colour-music elements (in the "SKB" sense) are present there - music and light perceived simultaneously.

40 The two main halls are in Rossiya in Moscow and Octyabriski at Leningrad41 Since 1968 Yu. Pravdyuk has been giving colour-music performances in Kharkov in a specially

designed hall. In the 1970's similar halls for such performances were built at the A. Scriabin Museum in Moscow, in Odessa, and in Tchkalovsk.

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ON THE WEB

The links below were added in August 2004. They show what has been done after this paper was written and provide further links to a variety of sites connected with synaesthesia.

Laser Experiments of SKB "Prometei" (Abstract written by Bulat M. Galeyev)

Prometheus Institute website: In English and Russian

To Colour and Light : Evolution of the "gravitational" synesthesia in music by B. Galeyev.

Dann Stayskal.: Dan attempts to show what his synaesthetic experiences look/sound like.

Synthetic Synaesthesia : A simple geometric shape (triangle, square, pentagon, etc.), called the Geometric Sound Mixer (GSM), is used to mix sounds. Timbre is represented as color within the GSM; the relative amount of each sound source is represented as a mix of colors, each one associated with a unique timber. A static representation of any dynamic sound mix (as it evolves over time) can be viewed on the Mix Time Line (see figure below), where relative moment-to-moment audio levels control the brightness as the sounds play in real time. Perceptually linear audio and

color mixes are achieved using psychophysical functions. The result is an environment that allows for complex manipulations of sound in a highly simplified, structured environment. Click HERE to go to the website

Dr.Hugo Museums of the Mind

Macalester College (Synaesthesia page)

Trinity College - Synaesthesia Research Group

Mixed Signals: Synaesthesia research articles

Camp Synaesthesia: Camp Synaesthesia was conceived and established for Burningman 2000 to provide pleasant stimulation for all the senses of the residents of Black Rock City.

Science Museum

Fusion Anomaly

University College London: Noam Sagiv; Synaesthesia Reseach Group; Department of Psychology

Peyote.com: Page on synaesthesia

Colour Academy

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