Synestesia and Cymatics

Last week, we worked on a sound based project in class where we were assigned to collect ten minutes’ worth of miscellaneous sound effects. My group had a ton of fun with the experiment and we spent a couple of days in total preparing the sounds for class. At the very beginning of our recording session, I was concerned that we would be able to find enough variation of objects or sounds to record with our limited resources. Most of the items we used were hard and either wooden or metal, so I assumed that we would have a collection of near identical sounds. However, to my surprise, that wasn't the case at all and each item had a distinct sound. For example, I assumed that using coins in a case and then keys dangling together would sound too similar. However, the coins were duller while the keys had a higher pitch. They also had a longer reverb while the coins were sharp and short.

I would love to see the cymatics of the coins that we shook versus the cymatics of the keys. I’m curious to see which one would have a more circular pattern and which one would be more intricate. I imagine the sound of the coins to have thinner lines in appearance due to the aggression behind the sharp sound. For the keys, I hypothesize thicker lines and a slower formation due to how the sound seems to spread out at a more gradual pace. One thing that comes to my mind when I see cymatics are sand gardens. It would be interesting to see the patterns formed on a cymatic transferred to a sand garden.

When watching the video, “Seeing a Song”, what kept coming to my mind was the idea of the woman’s synesthesia being applied from a movie instead and not just a song. I kept wondering, “what would her paintings look like if they were based off of watching an entire film instead of a song?”. I decided to turn to google to see if this has been done before. I didn’t find too many results except for an article about an artist named Jason Shulman who combined hours of film footage into one abstract piece of art. He mostly used Italian films and it is not clear if he has synesthesia, but it was fascinating to look at his art nonetheless. It can be found here: https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/ez5j9j/jason-shulman-every-movie-frame-single-photograph. This gives an idea for a fun exercise: seeing if I can create an abstract and colorful piece of art entirely from experiencing a film.