visual music.
The brain works in mysterious ways. Mine, for example, attributes rhythm and sound to almost everything, especially things that I see. It also attributes movement and abstract figures to the sounds that I hear. The brain processes reality through all 5 senses, making them work together for a multi sensorial experience, which sometimes results in associations that are seemingly impossible, like seeing sounds and hearing colors. This phenomenon is called Synesthesia. My research aims to find ways to experience music in a multi sensorial way, making the listening experience an unexpected and different one.
Elastika 1, 2 & 3
Commission for the Miami Symphony Orchestra / Video mapping on Zaha Hadid's sculpture inside the Moore Building / Miami, USA, 2018
the research.
Imaginary Instruments:
How would a folded piece of paper sound musically? Or a cube of sugar absorbing coffee? How would the bang of a snare look, or which color is a trumpet?
With this research I aim to build visual universes for music that I compose. These universes can be made out of real objects (like paper, plastic or paint), or can be made out of animated figures that mimic the way these sounds translate into visuals in my head. The illusion that an object makes a different sound to the one inherently associated with it, makes it an improbable instrument. An imaginary instrument.
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Elastika 1
Commission for the Miami Symphony Orchestra
Miami, USA, 2018
Linear Scores:
For me, music has first and foremost, a movement. A movement in an infinite space, and looks like bursts of light that move up and down following the music, leaving a trail of luminous threads. My first dabble into visual music consisted of drawing a single line that followed the movement of a melody. I developed it further, with time, into several lines, different colors… then shapes. The line becomes a very simple representation of the melody and its evolution in time. Which is exactly what a score is.
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Linear Score #5 - Confutatis
Chalk on sidewalk performance
Paris, France, 2012
Sound Architectures:
Music is made out of alternating moments of sound and silence. When I started seeing architecture as such, alternating geometries of full and empty spaces, I started to hear the music behind certain kinds of structures and architectural masterpieces. The rhythmic patterns of their façades made for interesting repetitive motives, and the more organic shapes were like waves of hovering chords. I started imagining complex interactions between the different elements, and each element was an instrument on its own. For Sound Architectures, I take the real elements of a building and translate the geometry of it into music. Each part of the building is its own instrument, and I animate it accordingly. I then project these animated shapes onto the façade of the building, transforming it for the time of a song into a giant instrument, into the executor of its own music.
White Drums
Video mapping on Portzamparc's Cité de la Musique façade / Paris, France, 2018