In this project, I aim to gain a wider and comprehensive understanding of music and visual synesthesia. This will be achieved through researching about visual aspects such as colour and emotion, visual imagery through evoked emotions and utilising visual imagery to create a narrative. Eventually, I aim to find and analyse genres of music that would compound well with each visual element; ultimately enhancing and creating a visual and audio synthesised piece.
My research will separate into four sections, each assisting me in the understanding of visual and music synesthesia. Diving into the history of visual music, I will be able to understand the foundation and origin of the art form. Learning their methodology and to get an insight on how visual music has developed over time. Researching about music and visual synesthesia will help me grasp the psychological and neurological aspects of how people interpret music and how it is visualised through dissecting the piece of music to its’ essence of tone, melody, rhythm and syntactic characteristics; visualising and associating each aspect to a visual imagery of colour, shape, and texture. Investigating into the psychological aspect of emotion and how that ties in with colour, I will be able to understand how that ties in with music and triangulate how colour corresponds to emotion evoked by the music. Finally, inquiring about how music is able to story tell, I will try to incorporate abstract storytelling through my practical of experimental animation shorts.
To assist me with my investigation, I have gathered a range of reliable secondary and primary sources about the different research aspects. Besides reading articles and websites online, I have gathered some books as well that may help me gain deeper knowledge on aforementioned topics. Moreover I have a range of reachable primary sources; Music undergraduates and potentially a professor at Kings College London to assist on the music aspect of the research. Psychology students and potentially a professor from Hong Kong University, to help assist on the psychological aspects of colour and emotion. Finally Animation students and tutors for the visual aspect of the research.
Creating experimental shorts as my practical, I will explore among different music types; lyrical and non-lyrical music and music in different languages to see how that may affect the effectiveness of the visual pairings of colour, style, and visual imagery and narrative of the animation short. Some challenges that may be encountered along this project will be the process of the experimental animations as this would be an abstract process from a more traditional animation narrative project. The visuals of this project is significant and a lot of forethought must be put into the visuals of the depiction. Accumulatively, having to significantly focus on the visuals, potentially even mix mediums, and possibly create an abstract narrative, the process of this project would be challenging but interesting. Ultimately, I believe this project would not only allow me to understand what music and visual synthesis is in an animation perspective, but also to understand the technical intricacies of the process involved to achieve music and visual synthesis.
