Red. A colour of extremes …

In this, the final episode of the primary colour series, we listen to the story of Russian composer and synaesthete Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin claimed to hear colour as different tones on the chromatic scale. He heard the colour deep red as “F” on the keyboard.

Over the next few months I will be working on the other colours in the ROYGBIV spectrum. Until then please visit Radio National to listen to Red, Yellow, and Blue.

Yellow, a colour that can provoke joy and nausea. Artists have used its binary shades to reflect summer’s vitality and our gradual decay. The negative connotations of yellow are quite strong in the English language. Consider: yellow-bellied, yellow-streak, yellow-journalism, yellow-fever.

If we were to imagine the sound of yellow, what would we hear? Viewing fields of sunflowers we might connect them with pleasant high pulses of energy; yet as their petals begin to fade their former sound could be replaced with low murky drones.

“Yellow” is the latest colour to be heard in my “Sound of Colour” series on ABC Radio National’s Soundproof. To listen or to download this piece please click here.

Next week, the colour red.

IKB 191, monochromatic painting by Yves Klein

For the past few months I have been working on a short series of works interpreting the colour of sound for Australia’s Radio National.

This 3-part series features a combination of spoken word and soundscapes designed to reflect the emotional resonance that is shared by sound and colour.

The first episode, Blue, is now free to download through Radio National’s program Soundproof.

While you are visiting the Soundproof page check out their archive of radio art and other delicious audio features; all of which are freely available to download.

Click here to listen to my work The Colour of Sound: Blue.

Over the last 10 years, Copenhagen-based graphic designer Denise Burt has been on a unique discovery of contemporary classical music through her work designing covers for hundreds of art music releases. In Seeing New Music she tells, from a personal viewpoint, the stories behind the creation of 24 of her CD designs. She also explains how – starting out as a music novice – she learnt to enquire and engage with the ideas behind the often complex music, in order to create more meaningful designs. The following is an excerpt from the introduction in this book, subtitledContemporary classical music through the eyes of a graphic designer, which I felt compelled to share with you.Republished with permission.

Just because I’m a graphic designer working with new music, don’t think that I’m an expert in classical music. I’m a graphic designer for a reason – my tendency is towards visual…

Ora 20: Performing Silences
Daniela Cascella and Salomé Voegelin
26 March 2015
8pm
Resonance104.4FM

As part of their ongoing collaboration, Daniela Cascella and Salomé Voegelin were invited to perform Ora live within the context of the Science Museum Workshop Silence & Music, held in February at the Royal College of Music and organised by Tim Boon and Aleksander Kolkowski. They improvised sounds, texts, materials and voices that do not explain or interpret but practice rhythms, repetitions, coincidences and discordancies to produce aesthetic, poetic and political silences.

Credits
Salomé Voegelin, not quite sitting down for six minutes
Daniil Kharms, The Plummeting Old Women
Richard Ford, Women with Men
Billy Wilder (dir.), Sunset Boulevard
Arturas Bumsteinas, Night on the Sailship
Brandon LaBelle, The Lexicon of the Mouth
Gert Jonke, The Distant Sound
Lawrence AbuHamdan, The right to remain silent
Pauline Oliveros, Ghosting 14:48
Frances Dyson, The Tone of Our Times
Jerry Hunt, Transform (Stream):…