Synæsthetic Music or the Ultimate Ocular Harpsichord
Julian Villegas, Michael Cohen · 2007
We address the problem of visualizing microtuned scales and chords such that each representation is unique and therefore distinguishable. Using colors to represent the different pitches, we aim to capture aspects from the musical scale impossible to represent with numerical ratios. Inspired by the neurological phenomenon known as synaesthesia, we built a system to reproduce microtuned MIDI sequences aurally and visually. This system can be related to Castel's historic idea of the 'Ocular Harpsichord'.