I’ve come across another UK artist whose art is informed by intriguing ideas, among them aural-visual synesthesia. Kevin Laycock, who teaches painting at the School of Design of the University of Leeds, is a musician himself, and very interested in the relationship of painting and design to music. To quote from a statement at the Drumcroon Gallery:
Kevin Laycock’s recent paintings explore the structure of ‘Colour Symphony’, an orchestral work created in 1922 by the composer Arthur Bliss. The composer, who was known for creating music with unusual combinations of instrument and voice, had set out to explore the musical associations of colour. In these paintings, Kevin Laycock is returning the musical score to the colour that inspired it, exploring the qualities of colour in music and paint, finding a painted equivalent for the musical structures and sounds.
The two images shown here are from the series just described, called “Tectonics.”
There is a thread linking Laycock’s latest work with the concept we discussed a while back of visual indeterminacy, as elucidated and represented by Robert Pepperell. In fact, the title of his most recent series is “Uncertain Harmonies,” referring to a particular orchestral composition written to be played with the different string sections tuned a quarter tone apart. I haven’t heard it, but presumably the ear finds some difficulty in relating to the ambiguous harmonic structure. There is a nice essay on this newest series in a new online journal called Colour: Design and Creativity.
Laycock’s paintings have a distinctly musical feel to me. The underpinning of the grid sets up a sense of rhythm, which is, however, far from overwhelming. It is always there, at the largest and smaller scales, but is varied or reinforced as one moves around and through the composition. It does not seem predictable as a naive transcription might. To me it works well whether one “reads” the painting in the usual way, letting one’s attention fall where it is drawn from moment to moment, or in a more linear way, as if reading a page of text–more akin to the actual experience of music. There is a definite feeling of unity, of relationship across the individual, chaotic details.
Have you ever thought of an artwork, either one of your own or one you’re viewing, in musical terms? I have sometimes thought about a rhythmic feeling I would also like to achieve in photographs of certain landscape subjects, though I’ve never been particularly successful. Nevertheless, the musical connection has enhanced my appreciation of those places.
Steve,
The paintings are very abstract and I am sure there is a method in the madness… The only thing that bothers me is the fact that if Kevin is finding an equivalent to the original score, there must be some kind of a pattern (that relates to the music) which is not readily apparent in the pictures. Maybe with the music set to corresponding pieces, this will shine through better – but at the moment, I do not see it (maybe it is just Monday morning maladies).
Have you ever thought of an artwork, either one of your own or one you’re viewing, in musical terms?
When I’m working in the studio, I pretty much always think of what I’m doing in both visual and musical terms, simultaneously. Rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, movements, transposing from one key to another – these are all musical concepts that have near equivalents in the visual realm. Probably because I’ve been writing songs for almost as long (not quite) as I’ve been painting, the two worlds are very intertwined for me. My journals/sketchbooks are filled with drawings and song lyrics, and often lists of titles that sometimes turn into songs, and other times turn into paintings (or whole series). The first time someone asked me how I know when a painting is finished, without even thinking about it I said “when it sings”.
Steve, I like Laycock’s paintings very much, so thank you for sharing them with us. I can definitely feel the musicality in them. But I must say, the square formats get in the way a bit for me. I find myself wanting to see them sprawling out horizontally. These days I think of musical structure the way I see it in computer recording programs, like ProTools, where the x axis = time, and the y axis functions to show changes in pitch or volume, as well as layers of simultaneous voices (instruments).
Sunil,
I don’t think there is meant to be a strict stroke-to-note correspondence to the music, but rather the feeling of the colors and forms, the pacing of the rhythms, are meant to relate to, for example, different movements of the piece.
True, it’s quite abstract, but perhaps that’s appropriate, as music may be the most abstract art. And according to oft-quoted 19th century writer and art critic Walter Pater, “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”
David,
I was definitely thinking of your work when looking at Laycock’s. Yours is much more organic and perhaps polyphonic. I agree about the format. But I still say what you really need to do is make a linoleum floor that people can move on and feel the music physically. Imagine the free-form dances!
Steve,
the link that you provided ‘nice essay’ mentioned that
Previously, when we discussed synethesia, I read on Wikipedia that György Ligeti associated music with color. (Since then, Wikipedia has been edited and he is no longer mentioned). I then asked his son Lukas Ligeti http://www.lukasligeti.com
Do you also associate sound with colors?
And Lukas replied:
I love Lukas’ music but I do not have an affinity for his father’s music
.
what you really need to do is make a linoleum floor that people can move on…Imagine the free-form dances!
Freeform would be cool, but I think it would be even better to have dance diagrams designed right into the floor – shoe prints and arrows. What dances do you think would be the most marketable?
Birgit,
Thanks for the fascinating follow-up! I’ll have to listen to both Ligetis; I don’t know either yet.
David,
Sheesh, what do I know from dances? They would have to move through the whole space, and probably have little coordination among the dancers weaving through in different directions. They’d have to sign a liability waiver before participating, or wear football pads and helmet.
They would have to move through the whole space, and probably have little coordination among the dancers…football pads and helmet.
Steve, I’m impressed! I have no idea you were such a talented choreographer!
There are some structural grid similarities in my painting “Harbour” and these images.Funny when we are not that far from each other!
Of course there are differences too.
“Harbour” is based around an eceltic track called Yachts by A Man called Adam. This tune that now features on peaK time UK BBC TV programs too – I’ve had it for ages!
Birgit – I am still to listen to Ligetis.
Mark,
I did think about you and the parallels in your work…
Glad you responded…
Yes, Mark, I thought of you also and nearly mentioned you in the post. But it seems that Laycock takes the music not so much as inspiration or as part of his working method, but as the actual subject of his paintings, whereas I would say that you do not (insofar as I know). Do you think that’s a fair way of putting it? I’m very interested in your view of this, please correct me if that doesn’t sound right.
I use music to develop a feeling, an emotion, and a sense of something that evokes an inner beauty. For me, music opens up feelings, which in turn allow concepts, ideas, and images to arise inside my mind; and that is what I paint.
To do this music is part of my working method and is also my inspiration but it is not my subject matter. Undoubtedly my personal experiences and life to date play an immense part in what comes to mind when listening to music and painting.
Some artists see subject matter, ideas, and concepts in the world of people, of landscape etc. And if I understand correctly Kevin Laycock uses music as his subject matter. My subject matters are the limitless concepts, ideas, people, landscape, colours and so on that arise when I enter into the world of music, the world of sound – and that is a very, very big world and range of subject matter! It’s like exploring another planet with a childlike curiosity. I believe an artist should be free from constraints to creativity and free from template approaches of producing work; my method allows this to flourish in me.
Hopefully I’m better at doing what I do than talking about it, but in summary I use the feeling/emotion and imagery that arises from when I listen to music, not the music itself.
Sunil & Steve – thank you for thinking of my work.
Steve:
Seems my visual and auditory centers don’t communicate with each other.
I find myself reading Laycock’s paintings almost like some form of sheet music. The loosely formatted grid structure and the opaque blocks of color register for me almost like a series of reticles that give form and focus to the reservoir of almost meaning lurking in the background.
I was reading an old newpaper (I’m talking 1800’s) article entitled “The Effects of Colors on Odors.” It was about just that–if color made things smell differently.
I thought that was:
A. a great title for a work
B. The follow up article might have been “The Effects of Sound on Sight.”
I wonder if such a study has been done?
If say, gallery goers walked into a gallery with music and one without, and were then queried on the responses to the work on the walls. They might praise the completeness and symmetry more when hearing music…?
And if anyone is bored, there is a “challenge” on my site. Check it out if you want. It too might play into this!
“The Effects of Colors on Odors.” It was about just that–if color made things smell differently.
Hi Monica. This is an interesting idea, and I wonder about the inverse as well. Can smells affect what color you see?
…to taste voices…
http://synesthesie.nl/
The over-under quality of laycock’s grid really reinforces the way I listen to music — sometimes a single instrument will rivet my attention and then suddenly I will find myself whirled away in a river of sound. These effects are not necessarily keyed to the musical effects themselves — whole orchestras can be blasting away but suddenly it will be the piccolo or french horn that captivates me.
Last night I was painting in one of those serendipitous modes — a bit exhausted, post some pain so feeling tender but not hurting any longer, more rested than I had been earlier in the day; a kind of post-fog focused but relaxed state. I was listening to whatever our local classical station was playing. Everything that was played changed the way I was painting — there was a wide range of “stuff” from Chopin-like impressionistic vaguenesses to Beethoven’s Seventh through Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” By the End of Time, though, I was too caught up in the music to paint anymore.
But I don’t paint music — it just fills up all the space around me and cushions me and gives me little thrills in the back of my neck while I’m pondering naples yellow.
by the way, Amazon tells me that those who bought the Massiaen also bought G. Ligeti; I think I will have to investigate.
Hello
I am Kevin Laycock. Just a quick note the images you are showing belong to a project called Tectonics and the Uncertain Harmonies series as you suggest.
regards
kevin
Thank you for the clarification, Kevin. I added a note in the post that I hope makes it clearer that the paintings shown are not from the “Uncertain Harmonies” series. Though the latter certainly has a strong kinship with the images from the older “Tectonics” series shown here (for reasons of web-friendliness), the newer ones certainly have a distinct flavor. The only place I know of to view them online is in the journal essay mentioned in the post.
In a related vein, I wonder whether there have been musical pieces written from particular paintings. I would assume so, but does anyone know of an example?
it was Kandinsky that related his experience of colour to music.
Kandinsky: ¨Painting, he believed, should aspire to be as abstract as music, with groups of colour relating to one another like sequences of chords in music…..His developing use of abstraction mirrored the musical innovations of his friend, the composer Arnold Schoenberg.¨.
It was Kandinsky….¨ had experienced a synaesthetic epiphany whilst listening to a performance of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin.
Painting, he believed, should aspire to be as abstract as music, with groups of colour relating to one another like sequences of chords in music. His developing use of abstraction mirrored the musical innovations of his friend, the composer Arnold Schoenberg¨.
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/london/news/ART38415.html
here we are: from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/06/10/bakandinsky10.xml&sSheet=/arts/2006/06/10/ixtop.html
the Tate Gallery show…Kandinsky is believed to have had synaesthesia, a harmless condition that allows a person to appreciate sounds, colours or words with two or more senses simultaneously. In his case, colours and painted marks triggered particular sounds or musical notes and vice versa. The involuntary ability to hear colour, see music or even taste words results from an accidental cross-wiring in the brain that is found in one in 2,000 people, and in many more women than men.
it´s an interesting debate….
Steve
RE comment 20
Mussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is a fairly well known classic piece that was made in reaction to images (and grief)
http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics/pix.html
lynne and melanie,
Thank you for continuing my art history education. I had had the impression that Kandinsky wanted art with the abstract and rhythmic/structural properties of music; I didn’t know he (at least sometimes) reacted to specific performances. Similarly, I had always taken Mussorgsky’s title as metaphorical, not realizing there was a specific exhibition. It’s nice to see the influence going both directions.
I think I remember reading somewhere about Cage and his musical performance pieces too related or inspired by visual experinces, but in Australia there are one or two very well known performance pieces collaborative improvisations to be exact, inspired by this idea of synaesthetic experience
‘Sydney by Night’ (1995), Ken Done actually places musical quavers and notes on the canvas. Done explains, ‘Sydney by Night’ is a piece of music that James Morrison wrote to my painting of the same title. We did an album together, he wrote seven pieces of music to seven of my painting.
then searching inernet, I came up with Chris Enright:he says: As with everything, I find visual arts seem to come to life when they’re mixed with music. It pulls me into the story associated with a painting, and makes it more dramatic. Sometimes I’ll even visit a museum and bring my mp3 player, trying to find tunes that seem to fit with a particular painting. I hope people find that the atmosphere of the museum, and the music we perform, compliment each other well.
Rowan-Hull M. Seeing Music, Hearing Colour – Pre-concert talk given at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, Oxford: 30 April 2004.
Ken Done interview with Janet McKenzie, 4 June 1998. In: The Art of Ken Done. Sydney: Craftsmans House, 2000.
It´s certainly food-for-thought and inspiration in both directions…
and sorry Steve I didn´t mean to sound preachy :-)
it comes from spending so much time teaching students
lynne,
Continuing my art history education is something I’m actively trying to do, so my comment was not meant at all negatively. Thanks for the further pointers. One I can add is photographer Bruce Barnbaum, who produced a photo book with CD he calls Tone Poems. Unfortunately I haven’t seen it myself. Also along these lines, Mark Illingworth wrote a post on his painting process, which closely involves music.
Guys:
Has this already been covered – can synaesthesia be induced?
Jay,
Excellent question, especially for those of us who are rather philistine-ish in this matter. As I understand this is a matter of hard-wiring in the brain. While we might be able to appreciate the concept of synesthesia, if we don’t have, we simply have to stand aside and say “interesting.”
I say this, but then I remember the studies of “perfect pitch” which I had assumed was also hard-wired. About 15 % of English speakers have perfect pitch. However, the Chinese, whose language depends heavily upon pitch, exhibit perfect pitch in abut 70% of the population. So my notion could be entirely wrong — it may be a more a matter of practice and inculcation than of brain wiring.
Making music and visual art complimentaries, however, is different from true synesthesia and juxtaposing one with the other I find both delicious and obtainable. Of course, So I’m not a total philistine.
Steve, lynne,
Speaking of Kandinsky reminded me of Klee, who was a violinist (professionally, I think, but I may be misremembering that) and shared some of Kandinsky’s ideas/goals of finding a way to bypass language/analysis visually in the same way that music does aurally. He (Klee) incorporated musical notation as part of the iconography in some of his work, most notably the fermata, but other symbols as well.
Jay, June,
I have a friend who is a synesthete. She can’t opt in and out of it and it seems that there is always or often some rapid translating going on for her. This makes for some interesting art conversation because the words for some things are different than the concepts they represent. For example, in her understanding, the word “puce” is lime green, whereas the color is that soft lavender-gray-beige. (I wonder sometimes if the word/idea “Melanie” is also lime green because often when we’re casting about for color suggestions for one thing or another, she’ll look at me and say “Or how about really bright lime green?”)
I don’t doubt that there are “hard-wired” synaesthetes, but I also believe there’s a related habit of mind one could develop, simply by occasionally thinking, when you hear an interesting sound for example, what color you would associate with it. (Or substitute whatever type of connection you want to practice.) My guess is this would soon become fairly easy.
Ramachandran is big on synaesthesia, though I think he overestimates its importance for art. I tried his kiki/booba test on a 4-year old and she immediately gave the expected answer. So we’re all synaesthetes to some degree.
Guys:
The Cleveland Indians need to sign up some Chinese players then.
Actually, I was nudging the idea of drug interactions without coming right out. I once inhaled, but that’s it. So I cannot speak to LSD etc. Those among you, can you remember experiencing anything that might fill this bill?
June:
As for those 70% it may be that natural selection is at work. One’s chances for progeny are enhanced if one says “Will you marry me?” rather than “You’ve got a bird’s nest in your hair.” or some such.
Steve,
My friends with synesthesia swear this is something very different than associative thinking, although clearly associations enhance art in their own way. These friends can tell, so they say, because the synesthesia they experience (each has a different version — for some it color and number, for others it’s music and names, etc) is very different than if they work in an associative manner on other senses. So if color and music are synesthetically aligned, a person like that could tell us if the same kind of sensation happened with letters of the alphabet and taste. And so my (3) friends insist — no, it isn’t the same.
Jay, you disappoint me. I thought that we who lived through the sixties had our good sense and brains completely fried by various highs; that’s what’s wrong with the world, right? OH, that, and the Clintons, who caused everything you and I didn’t. Now I discover that you were off elsewhere!
(and re: perfect pitch) You are of course right about natural selection — it’s a possibility. But I’m not sure about language and time-lines of evolution, so I’m sticking to my own theory. I like thinking that I could have perfect pitch if I just worked at it a bit.)
I’m Melanie’s friend with synesthesia. It’s defined as a completely automatic, involuntary and consistent perception and it certainly is as I experience it.
I’ve belonged to an online syn list for over 10 years. Nearly all of the leading researchers, Richard Cytowic, Sean Day and Edward Hubbard among them, are members of the list, as well as many other scientists and neuroscientists, and hundreds of syns all over the world. It is accepted among these researchers that syn is not induced and can’t be learned. You either have it or you don’t, like colorblindness or perfect pitch.
It’s a perception, or more specifically a way of perceiving, so it’s very hard to describe verbally. It just is. How does someone who’s colorblind describe exactly what they see to someone who isn’t, and vice versa?
The syn community worked very hard on the article on Wikipedia and supervise it carefully, so it’s a very good reference if you’d like to know more.
Oh, and Melanie (the word) is mostly blue, with red and brown and hints of yellow (which is a very poor description of what I actually “see” when I write her name).
Jane :
Pleased to meet you.
Yes, how do you explain such a thing? But I would ask this: is the syn response triggered by everything in one’s field of perception simultaneously? I go out and am accosted by a medley of interwoven sounds: dogs, kids at play, traffic, wind. Would you register all of this as one composite color, say? Or does it depend upon an act of focus? I have noticed that items are usually mentioned (Melanie, the sound of a trumpet, Etc.), but less seems to be said of more smeary and generalized phenomena.
The form of syn that I experience most strongly is colored-grapheme synesthesia, that is colors for letters, numbers and words. I also experience other forms of syn with lesser impact on my life (spatial number form and linguistic personification). There are a myriad of crossed-sensations that syns can experience, touch to sound, sound to color, word to taste. My daughter, for example, experiences sight to taste. As a result she is a *very* picky eater. When she sees mashed potatoes, the visual stimulus causes her to taste gritty, dirty socks in her mouth, involuntarily and spontaneously. Kind of ruins the whole idea of eating actual mashed potatoes!
Most syn responses are not overwhelming and do not impact normal living, although there is a school of thought that some autistics may have syn responses that are experienced to such a degree that they interfere with their ability to function because of the overstimulation.
Okay, so how to describe the ineffable? To use your example, when you go out and are accosted by the medley of sound, can you concentrate on one, a dog barking say, and tune the rest out? The level of the individual sounds hasn’t changed, but focusing on one can bring it to the fore. Or, if you’re concentrating on something internally, can you tune out all of the sounds so that it’s merely a background hum that doesn’t draw particular attention or distract you?
All letters for me have individual colors, unchanging – a is always red, e is always blue. Combinations of letters and words evoke a slightly different response. It doesn’t matter whether the letters are written or only pictured in my mind’s eye, the colors are ever-present. Most of the time I can suppress (tune out) the response so that I can read a book, or write on a computer, and not be distracted by the individual colors, in essence the colors become the background hum. When I’m tired, it takes more of a conscious effort and the color responses are more likely to be distracting so that I can’t concentrate on what I’m reading or writing (hard when you’re working to a deadline!)
Words and letters fascinate me, I have over 600 fonts on my computer. I’ve had this perceptional difference all my life and didn’t realize that other people didn’t until I was about 23 and didn’t know it had a name until I was 25. One of the pros of this form of syn for me is that I am a really good speller. When a word is spelled incorrectly, the colors are wrong. I can also remember phone numbers easily. I learn other languages fairly quickly (the written form especially).
One of the cons is that, as a visual artist, it can take me longer to name a piece than to make it. Not only does the meaning or intent of the word or phrase need to be appropriate to the piece, but the colors of the word or phrase have to work. In the same way that you wouldn’t necessarily name a piece about the war Goodness and Light, I wouldn’t be able to name a dark red and purple piece Goodness and Light (that phrase is very white, beige, pale blue and yellow – again not adequately describing the actual colors and combinations). On the plus side sometimes a word can trigger a piece, due to its colors.
It’s also very hard to explain to other people, most especially in a professional context. How do I explain to an editor/publisher that the colors of the words of the title of my book are vitally important to me without sounding like a complete loony tune?
Jane:
Before going to the Wicki article, allow me to ask a few questions that I’m sure will be answered therein.
Is the letter “a” green to you? Some time back a few of us, with our compartmentalized senses, played a little parlor game. We announced individual numbers and letters and asked the members of the group to tell what colors came to mind. Nobody was keeping minutes, but I remember a remarkable concurrence of response. There may have been a little “I’ll have what she’s having.” going on – but even then the agreement was unexpected.
In a related sense can there be an informational analogue to this phenomenon? For example, inanimate objects often remind me of people. It’s not associative in the sense of a Prius looking like Bettye who owns one, but something more smeary and generalized. For example, we might be passing a diner and I’ll say to Matt: “Does that diner remind you of Richard Nixon?”. He’ll say:”Kinda.”, having put up with kind of thing for so long and resigned to it. But then this might just be a habit of mind rather than a structural thing.
June:
Sorry to disappoint. Somebody once gave me a bag of marijuana and it sat in a cabinet for a long time and became a kind of dust that I threw away. I promised myself an old age full of dissolution and substance abuse. I’m not there yet and likely never will be.
I wish you the best in your pitch-perfect quest.
Jane,
Even absent syn, seeking agreement on titles is maddening since it’s a marketing decision, not an artistic one.
Jane,
Thank you so much for sharing your perceptions with us. If you don’t mind a little experiment, I wonder whether you have more or less difficulty than a person without syn in saying the colors of words in a test like this one. I find I’m quite slow at it.
Steve,
I’ve taken this sort of Stroop effect test a few times before. Actually, depending on how hard I’m concentrating and how tired I am, I can be pretty fast at it, because I activate my coping mechanism of *tuning out* both the colors a word is printed in and my perception of its colors just to be able to comprehend its meaning. When I am tired it takes me a vvveeeerrry long time to read the words, and even then I’m not certain I’m right. Of course, the entire time I’m reading a list like that, or looking at any physically colored text, a small part of the back corner of my mind is screaming that it’s just wrong.
Jay,
My A is red. There have been letter/color combinations found to be more common among syns (red As are one of them), and there hasn’t been an explanation accepted by consensus in the scientific community as of yet, that I know of. Serious neuroscientific cognitive research into the *condition* began fairly recently in modern times, so much is still unexplained. I can’t imagine not having it.
Steve:
I see a monkey wrench winging its way about the Stroop test. Overall, I’m able to see and name a color for what it is by shutting off the reading component. For me, however, deciding what to name a given color (Is that a tan?) clouds things a bit. Maybe I should just stick with the color names printed in the chart, but my ignoring them denies me their access. I get the feeling that one is not bidden to study the chart in advance, but simply to dive in.
Does anyone know where I could find the whole series? Pictured is only Blue and red where can I find purple and green ?