Concept

Chromaticaster is an interactive controller of musical and optical illusion. The notes on the keyboard are associated with colours, objects and shapes that appear on the viewer. These three-dimensional shapes create the illusion of coming from an infinitely distant sound source; they act as a visual representation of the movement of sound through space. 

The artwork offers a new interpretation of light organs that explore different levels of audio-visual correspondences or synchresis – the transient, mental fusion of visual and sound structures, when these occur at the same time (M. Chion: Audiovisión, 1994). Chromaticaster thus offers a game of “synaesthetic metaphors” between sound and image. 

Synesthesia is an involuntary perceptual phenomenon in which a sensory or cognitive stimulus causes experiences in another sensory pathway, such as at a crossroads of the senses. Digital synesthesia uses audiovisual resources to emulate this perceptual phenomenon in an extrinsic way. 

The investigation into the relation between the sound and colour spectra, characteristic of Nourathar's work, pays tribute to other light organs designed by the pioneers of technological art of the early 20th century. These include: Sarabet by Mary Hallock Greenewalt, where the correspondence between colour and sound depended on the performer; Thomas Wilfred's Lumia, which featured moving light compositions without sound; or the modified keyboards from Xul Solar.