The “Color Sounds” program was created as an experimental tool allowing users to experience music through colors — and vice versa, to perceive colors as sounds. The goal was to design an interface inspired by
synesthesia, a phenomenon of cross-sensory perception where stimulation of one sense evokes the experience of another.
Already in antiquity, the Pythagoreans observed relationships between the lengths of vibrating strings and color proportions. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton associated musical notes with colors of the visible light spectrum. These ideas returned in abstract art (Kandinsky, Scriabin) and in modern audiovisual experiments.
In the Color Sounds program, sounds and colors are paired based on wavelength: sound frequencies (in Hz) are matched with frequencies of visible light (in THz), scaled down into the audible range by dividing by powers of 2 (as in octave structures).
The mapping used in this program:
- Violet: 400–450 nm → 350–450 Hz (e.g., A – A#)
- Blue: 450–495 nm → 280–350 Hz (e.g., F# – G)
- Green: 495–570 nm → 220–280 Hz (e.g., C – D)
- Yellow: 570–590 nm → 190–220 Hz (e.g., B – C)
- Orange: 590–620 nm → 160–190 Hz (e.g., A – B)
- Red: 620–750 nm → 120–160 Hz (e.g., F – G)
This program operates with symbolic representations of these relationships — it does not aim for scientific accuracy but rather offers a culturally and aesthetically grounded experience of the shared space of sound and color.