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Dancers performing sculptural movements & body “envelopes” with monochromatic textile banners in Colour Tuning by Alexandra Murray-Leslie & Sam Ferguson.

Colour Tuning (2013)

Alexandra Murray-Leslie, Australia
(with Sam Ferguson)

   

Description

Colour Tuning is practice based research into the relationship between colour, dance, fashion and music in the form of an APP (IPad application) developed to be used in conjunction with a performance fashion or live Art context. The APP is used during a performance, encouraging the audience and performers to tune into each other, via an IPad APP, to compose acoustic compositions or “Colour Music” (Kenneth, 1988, p.397).

Colour Tuning addresses multiple themes including: “Symbolism of colours in dress and fashion”, by translating colour and fashion into metaphorical sounds and timbres in music, to create a larger synesthesia Live Art experience. Colour Tuning presents a participatory dialogue between audience and designer, through the interactive nature of the Colour Tuning APP’s mode of presentation, by inviting audience members to use the IPad APP to tune into the colours they want to hear whilst watching the actors on stage or on the Street, the audience becomes the “prosumer” producer/consumer. Colour Tuning presents a critical view on the history of colors in style and fashion; questioning the powerful role color has played in consumer culture, by creating a tool for co-creation, embodying the notion of non-market based performance fashion, where the autor can be anyone and “the performance occurs in the moment “ (said Marina Abramovic on he occasion of the retrospective of her Works at the Museum of Modern Art, New York) (Gareis et al. 2010, p.354).

References

  1. Kenneth, P. “Instruments to Perform Color‐Music: Two Centuries of Technological Experimentation,” Leonardo 21, No. 4 (1988) 397-406.
  2. Mahling, F. (1926) Das Problem der `audition colorée’: Eine historisch‐kritische Untersuchung. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 57, 165-301.
  3. Michael, P. 2000, ‘Color Music: Visual Color Notation for Musical Expression’, Leonardo, Vol. 33, No. 3 pp. 215-22.
  4. Keefer, C. Guldemond, J. (Ed). 2013, “Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction”, Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam and Center for Visual Music, New York.
  5. Blaszczyk, L, R. 2013, “The Colour Revolution” (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series), The MIT Press, Cambridge.
  6. Gareis S. Schollhammer, G. Weibel, P. 2012, “ Moments. A History of Performance in 10 Acts”, ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.
  7. Itten, J. 1961, 2The Elements of Colour: A Treatise on The Colour System of Johannes Itten”, John Wiley & Sons, INC. New York.

Medium

Coloured banners, computer cable wearables

Techniques

The APP player (eg: Audience member) points the IPad in the direction he or she would like to compose music and create colour feedback to and selects colours (eg: a collection of coloured clothing   worn by dancers, models or actors on stage) on the IPad screen, which are then tracked. Each colour denotes a different sound space (each colour being mapped to an acoustic generative algorithim). Once the colours on the screen (colour fields denote the bodies of the actors) start moving, the sounds   change according to what colour / actor comes close to another colour / actor and when the colours/actors overlap or make contact, new sounds are generated, like mixing coloured paint, meaning the performative composition of colour and sound is always in flux and never sounds the same.

Image credits

© Alexandra Murray-Leslie