Sound and color

The experience of color in the West has always been closely interwoven with the experience of music.

Some Greeks theorists considered "color"to be a quality of sound itself, together with pitch and duration.

What most impressed the Greeks,it seems,was the capacity of color,like sound,to be articulated in a series of regularly changing stages whose differences were perceptible in an equally regular way-for Aristotle and his school light and dark appear to have been cognate with clear and muffled sound or even high and low pitch.

The affective power of music depended on its status as action and its importance in that it provided the most comprehensive imitation of action in human affairs.

Reference: John Gage, the sound of color, P227 Color and culture.

Green

Green is the color of nature.
It symbolizes growth,harmony,and fertility.
Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety.
Use several shades of green for a fresh, springtime feel.
Green is life. Abundant in nature,green signifies growth, renewal, health, and environment.
Green is a restful color with some of the same calming attribute of blue.

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The psychological meaning of green on professor Max Luscher's color card test which is widely used by psychologists:

Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.

Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.

Experiment1 sound of color

If a movie loses its color and sound, we can judge the situation through the context and body-language of the characters, but we can not get more detail and emotional response directly through the black and white. And in common, black is an emotional safety color that its meaning depends on our association.

totoro s+c


green papaya s+c


The world is colored by colors and we experience them everyday in our life. We have emotional and subconscious response to color due to our primary knowledge and association of color. Actually, color has no sound to tell people the true meanings of themselves. “Naming colors is one way to manipulating their psychological impact” (Fraser & Bank, 2004, p.20).

What is the sound of green which has meaning of harmony, rest, environmental and peace? (Professor Max Luscher’s color card test) The sound and color function together in the Green Papaya clip evoke a summer and restful feeling, the sound tells natural meaning of the green color. Then, I mix up scenes of a cartoon movie that are vitally and happily. After watching this clip without sound and color, the one edited with sound and color will be more understandable and acceptable. The sound in this clip evokes a healthy and environmental meaning as the natural green appears in this clip.

Experiment 2 color of sound

If sound can tells the meaning of color, is color able to present the effect of sound?



I change the sound effect in Green Papaya clip to evoke another effect on this clip. What is color for the eerie and gloomy sound? I try to find one hue of green to corporate with the sound. The color of this clip is changed into vivid green. Vivid green usually evokes health and vitally yet, when works with eerie sound, the color has quite different implication. The same scene but applied with different hue of green and eerie musical sound, the outcome clip evokes a gloomy atmosphere. At the same time, vivid green here will be considered as a gloomy color. Also, it is considered that vivid green may functions other meanings when it is affected by other sound effect. Color presents the sound well in this clip although it is the result of sound effect and our emotional response to the sound and color actually.

In this experiment, sound plays an important role rather than the color due to it has powerful moral effect so that it gives a directly impact on people’s emotion. Meanwhile color affects the vision of the scene to evoke the atmosphere effectively.

Short conclusion: Sound and color is a closely relationship between each other. Sound is able to present the meaning of color; color also has capacity to function as a decoration of the sound effect. When they both work together, we response to them not only through our vision and association of color but also directly impacted by the information given by the musical sound. And sometimes sound defines the meaning of color.

Experiment 3-expression of mood

In this experiment, I mix the 3 footages that edited before to see what result will be. I find that there is a transformation of different hue of green even just 3 of them that are green, dark green and vivid green. Also, there is another transformation playing at the same time which is the pitch of the musical sound. We response to color and sound at different stage of the clip, so that our expression will be transformed constantly during the experience of sound and color in this clip.

“The experience of color in the West has always been closely interwoven with the experience of music……Some Greek theorists considered “color” to be a quality of sound itself, together with pitch and duration” (Gage, 1993, p.227). Our vision experiences the pitch and duration of different hue meanwhile we experience the different pitch and duration of the musical sound.

Following with the pitches and duration of sound and color, does our mood also have pitches and duration at the same time?

Experiment 4 wave of sound=wave of mood?

I record a video to show the running waveform of the mixture musical sound and find it is interesting that the waves running up and down, closely and sparsely. The sound wave of cartoon clip runs as a medium wave, wave of sound in Green Papaya clip runs as a lower and steady wave and wave of eerie sound rise and fall frequently.

Green papaya original sound waveform

eerie sound waveform

3 different sound wave

cartoon music

green papaya music

eerie music

mix soundwave

The waves of these 3 parts layered together will become an interesting pattern. It seems like a reflection of our mood when we watch this clip. And it is interesting that the pitch and duration of my mood is similar with the wave of the sound when I watch this wave clip. If we say the wave of sound equals wave of mood, how about the wave of color?