Spektral Hexplorer

Immersive Light Organ

Description

Artist: Nourathar Studio

Authors: Caen Botto & Marta Rupérez

Title: Spectral Hexplorer

Date: 2019

Medium: Site specific, immersive, interactive installation; reflective semi-sphere, computer, Arduino, speakers, hexa-chromatic keyboard (custom dev.)

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. Interactive controller of immersive musical & optical illusion.

> Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, as in a "crossing of the senses". E.g.: the ability to hear colour or see sound. Many colour theories historically explore the relation between the vibrations in sound, light and colour.

The installations offers an invitation to explore the sound and chromatic spectra through the interaction with a custom development controller: the Hexa-Khrom. It consists of a hexagonal keyboard in which the correspondence between colour and sound is developed according to shapes and forms. The arrangement of notes and colours in the controller encourages an intuitive playing, as harmonic sounding keys are grouped together. 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.