Kandinsky's synesthetic mind allowed him to create paintings that had the ability to play music to him. His paintings, abstract in form are also, I hypothesize, abstract in sound. I will de-construct an original painting by Kandinsky by color as well as movement, and will find the corresponding sounds. My goal for this project is to create the music that Kandinsky wanted us to hear by studying one of his paintings, Composition VI.
The sound fades in and then begins to move itself from one ear to the next, as well as up and down in frequency, creating waves similar to his brush strokes. The sounds of guitars will often be used in my interpretation because of the many instances of straight lines being set parallel to each other in the painting, representing guitar strings. The curved lines represent a bend in a guitar note. The build of the sound goes from fairly dark to quite heavy because of the incredible darkness of this painting. It is this dark color that attracted me to this particular painting of Kandinsky because of the rare role darkness plays in his compositions.
The middle of the piece, the peak of the build up, at first seems like a cancellation of build, but it is the opposite. This build up in my sound reaches silence in order to represent the color white that exists in the painting. According to Kandinsky, white is "so far above us that no sound from it can reach our ears." To me the main part of Kandinsky's "Composition VI" is the center because all of the swirls of color end in the center, as white.
The song will end similar to how it started, in a build. I want to have the song be a never ending cycle because of the fact that the painting is a cycle. It is an endless pool of colors that spiral into each other.