What Sound Does A Color Make?

by Kathleen Forde, Judith Richards, Jim Campbell

Synesthesia is the condition where stimulation of one sense (aural, for instance) triggers another (visual), so hearing a G minor chord might literally make you see red. This rare natural phenomenon seems less anomalous in our digital age, where all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, are coded into the zeros and ones of computer bits. What Sound Does a Color Make? explores the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media, and connects the recent boom of digital, audiovisual art to its predigital roots by presenting 10 contemporary works along with a selection of single-channel videos from the 1970s by a diverse group of international artists. The earlier works, by such pioneers of video art as Nam June Paik, Steina Vasulka and Gary Hill, place the current interest in synesthetic media art in a broader historical context, offering a unique perspective on this bending of human perception and cognition. Younger artists, such as D-Fuse and Jim Campbell, offer environments and installations that will make you hear the blues.

64 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2005