Ellen Hackl Fagan

ColorSoundGrammar

Influenced by scientific theories-both real and imagined my abstract paintings and interactive performance build connections between color and sound.

This exploration has led me to create a series of interactive games with viewers the most recent being The ColorSoundGrammar Game. To play, viewers select, from colored squares, the color(s) that best represent each note in the familiar Do Re Mi musical scale. Through these playful interventions we discuss their thoughts about color and sound relationships in-depth.

Documenting their responses in the form of photographs and notes in journals, I have compiled the results of approximately 600 people who have played the ColorSoundGrammar Game since the fall of 2008.  Some exciting consistencies in peoples’ color/sound blended grammars have emerged from the research gathered so far.

I have distilled this data and have been creating paintings and digital photographs based on these findings. These visual artworks introduce a wonderful completion to this pseudo-scientific investigation and celebrate the action of painting and experimental digital photography.

As input from these interactions evolves,  a universally accepted, emergent color/sound grammar is gaining momentum as I continue to work with people playing these synesthetic games.

I intend to combine the data gathered through the ColorSoundGrammar interventions with a new Reverse Color Organ and will begin showing this by the end of 2013.