This week’s topic was Synaesthesia, a concept I had never come across before.
Synaesthesia a cross-sensory perceptual function where a person interprets sound from shapes and colour. Wassely Kandinsky was a focus of the session, a Russian painter whose abstract works are strongly linked to Synaesthesia as he was believed to have had the condition. The Telegraph once described him as “The man who heard his paint box hiss” and although whether he actually had synaesthesia is debated, there is no doubt that his paintings show strong links to it and that he pioneered the synaesthesia movement in Europe.
The challenge was to pick a painting from one of the slides, create a mind map on paper of suggestive images, moods and emotions associated with the chosen painting and then create a soundscape to match.
I chose the painting shown above and put down my thoughts associated with it. The image was chaotic, sharp, mismatched and overwhelming, connotations that can often be associated with a city. To me, it also screamed jazz, everything about it from the shapes that look like records and musical keys, to the colour used so I knew this would have to be a strong element of my soundscape. For my soundscape I decided to create the re-create the chaotic buzz of the image using jazz music and city sounds. The track begins with sounds of city, bustling and busy, becoming more overwhelming as it plays out until it is shut down and fades. I then try to recreate the busyness of a city through different jazz tracks and instrument clips, layering them to create a dynamic and abstract soundscape.
The difficulty I ran into with this task was sourcing the material for the soundscape, limiting myself to free sound effects online was very restricting and time consuming when sourcing. If I had had more time for the task I would have gone out and recorded almost every sound I needed with a H5, possibly contacting music/jazz groups to record the music. This would have given me more creative freedom when putting together my soundscape.
I particularly enjoyed how this task forced me to think more abstractly, and encouraged me to start developing a project from my initial gut feeling I receive from a stimulus instead of contemplating concept for hours before getting stuck in.
PCA Isobel Wilkinson - BA Film 