Kandinsky's art between synaesthesia and machine learning
Google Arts & Culture: Sounds like Kandinsky
Born in Moscow in 1866, then naturalized French, the artist suffered from a neurological condition called synaesthesia , a sort of contamination of the senses in perception that allowed him to perceive and then translate in his works a relationship between sounds, colors and shapes. The experiment put in place by Google in collaboration with the Center Pompidou in Paris tries to replicate its dynamics, leveraging the potential of machine learning.When Kandinsky painted, two senses systematically worked together: hearing and the sight. Colors and shapes translated into sounds, harmonies and vibrations that made up lines and motifs.
Antoine Bertin and NSDOS, well-known names in the field of experimental music, took part in the initiative. It started with the analysis of Kandinsky's writings on synaesthesia, instructing the algorithms so as to make them simulate what the painter might have heard when painting "Yellow Red Blue" in 1925. The user has the freedom to enlarge individual parts of the composition, in an interactive way, exploring the sounds associated with colors and shapes.
The archive digitized by Google includes testimonies related to childhood memories, to the period spent teaching at the Bauhaus school, pictures of the holidays in the company of the German colleague Paul Klee (below) and the Neuilly studio.
To top it all off, the opportunity to stroll through an exhibition set up in augmented reality thanks to Pocket Gallery, projecting some of the works in the surrounding environment. This is the result.
For further information and to access the entire Google Arts & Culture archive dedicated to Kandisky, simply visit the section dedicated to the painter on the platform.
Source: Google Arts & Culture
