Måla med musik, komponera med färg : En retrospektiv studie av den kreativa processen, bland bild, musik och synestesi

Sammanfattning: The relationship between color and music, and their relation to the human being and our surrounding universe has been subject of studies, theories and experiments since the old ages. From the ancient China and Persia to the present times, philosophers, scientists and artists have tried to explain these connections between color and music and also tried to find answers to this ancient enigma. The invention of the color organ c. 1730, an instrument that was intended to display color in addition to the musical auditive experience, was the first attempt to materialize the practical correlation between notes and color. This correlation has its foundation in the ideas of Isaac Newton, who through his book Optics published only a few years earlier, conformed the beginning of a new art culture: “Visual music”, in which image and sound are the fundamental elements in the creative process. The “visual music” concept is not only grounded in the ideas of music and sound, but also in the extraordinary creative capability of certain individuals. In short, those blessed with the gift of synaesthesia, a condition that provides a very small percentage of our population with very unique abilities like seeing color when hearing sound. Synaesthesia, a term that has been surrounded by scepticism and disbelief until the middle of the 19th century, will be the ingredient that would open for a complete new world of creative experiences, and became one of the main subjects of investigation and creation for many modern artists like Kandinsky and Klee, poets like Baudelaire, and composers like Skrjabin, Schoenberg or Wagner. In this essay, I’ll create three different studies in which image and sound will be combined to conform unique works. And based on my own synesthetic experience, I will approach my own creative process with the intention of analyzing it and explain how this correlation of image and sound works from my own and subjective artistic perspective.