Ebb/Flow - Flow/Ebb: A Dialogue Between Visual Arts and Music
(2025)
author(s): Alex Designori
published in: KC Research Portal
This research explores the synergy between auditory and visual sensory impressions, investigating how music and visual arts can merge, interact, and resonate reciprocally to create a unique cross-modal performance. Central to this research is the collaboration with the visual artist Damiano Colombi. The focus is placed on two distinct types of interaction: large canvases enriching the visual space on stage, around which the musician moves, and digital projections created with TouchDesigner, a software that generates real-time visuals reacting to the music. These contrasting approaches shape an immersive experience, transforming sound into moving images and creating a dynamic interplay between structured visual elements and fluid digital projections.
A central challenge of this research is to create a balanced interaction between the auditory and visual components, so that each artistic discipline complements and enhances the other, allowing a continuous dialogue between sound and image.
Throughout the creative process, these ideas evolved organically, guided by continuous experimentation and reflection. By documenting the sensations, insights, and evolving artistic choices, this research not only explores the theoretical and technical intersections between music and visual arts but also highlights the deeply personal and intuitive nature of interdisciplinary collaboration. Ultimately, this research provides a framework for crafting audiovisual performances that foster a compelling and harmonious fusion of music and visual arts.
A Garden of Sounds and Flavours: Establishing a synergistic relationship between music and food in live performance settings
(2024)
author(s): Eduardo Gaspar Polo Baader
published in: KC Research Portal
During the past decade, there has been a surge in the literature about crossmodal correspondences, consistent associations our minds establish between stimuli that are perceived through different senses. Correspondences between sound/music and flavour/taste have received particular scholarly attention, which has lead to a variety of practical applications in the form of food and music pairings, mostly examples of so-called ‘sonic seasoning’, a way to use sound to enhance or modify the tasting experience.
This thesis aims to explore the pairing of food and music from an artistic perspective. Its goal is to find tools that would allow to present both music and food as components of coherent live performances in which neither of them is a mere ‘seasoning’ to the other. Through the description and exploration of different ‘mediating elements’ between them (such as crossmodal correspondences, but also structure, ritual, narrative, and others), a wide range of possibilities is presented to whoever wants to match food and music in a truly synergistic manner.
Readers interested in multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary artistic practices of any kind might find the outcomes of this research useful for their own work.
Are you colour deaf?
(2024)
author(s): Phoebe Rousochatzaki
published in: KC Research Portal
Originating from antiquity, the idea of associating colour with music has been researched extensively in recent decades. The terms for this phenomenon include crossmodal correspondences and synaesthesia (or chromaesthesia), both of which refer to associations our brain makes from stimuli that it perceives through different senses. Correspondence between sound and music, and light and colour, has been a scholarly topic for years—mostly from a scientific point of view.
This thesis aims to investigate different views on the subject, focusing on its artistic/aesthetic rather than neurobiological components. Music-colour correspondence was born from the need of philosophers to make sense of both music and the world. Linguistics has proven ambiguous when used to explain or make sense out of music, hence colour has been a very powerful replacement. It is possible to draw parallels between sound and light because of their similar ontological nature (vibration).
The goal of this thesis is to prove that such an association can enhance a classical music performance for the audience (as related to engagement) and for the performer (as related to analysis, artistic input). As a case study, Olivier Messiaen’s Theme and Variations is analysed in this rather unconventional colour-coded way.
Keywords: synaesthesia, chromaesthesia, crossmodal correspondences, Olivier Messiaen, colour and music.