Description

Site specific, immersive installation

Artist:   Nourathar Studio

Authors: Caen Botto & Marta Rupérez

Title:  Spektral Hexplorer

Date:  2019

Medium: Mixed media; reflective semi-sphere, "Hexachrom" keyboard (custom development). Software*, computer, projector, electronics, micro-controller, speakers, 

*Generative application developed in Max/MSP/Jitter by Caen Botto

Dimensions (cm): Variable

· Keyboard:  10 (h) x 25 (w) x 25 (d)

Concept

The Light Player. 

> Synaesthesia is an involuntary perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another sensory pathway, as in a "crossing of the senses". E.g.: the ability to hear colour or see sound. Digital synesthesia uses audio-visual resources to emulate this perceptual phenomenon in an extrinsic way.

Immersive installation that invites users to explore the “synaesthetic” correspondences between the sound and chromatic spectra through interaction with a custom-developed controller: the Hexachrom, a three-octave, hexagonal-shaped keyboard, in which the correspondence between colour and sound is developed based on shapes and forms. The arrangement of notes and colours on the controller encourages an intuitive playing, as harmonic sonorities are grouped in different areas of the instrument. Thus, to execute a pentatonic scale (five notes), the keys of five neighbouring colours are selected; to play a diatonic scale (seven notes) the keys of seven adjacent colours will be chosen.

Historical light organs include Mary Hallock Greenewalt's Sarabet, where the correspondence between light and colour depended on the interpreter, or Thomas Wilfred's Lumia, which presented silent light compositions in motion.