The Melodies of Renoir's Colours (Details)
Analysis
From Pigment Data to Melodies
In this video, you can learn about the process used to analyse colour pigments in paintings, and why this is important...
Illustrations by Caroline Bouvier.
In the video above, you learnt that the light waves detected in a pigments provide analysts with a unique 'fingerprint' of the colour pigment. But how was the music linked to this data?
Composer Ricky Chaggar set himself the challenge of composing music that uses this data closely, resulting in music which is unique to each colour pigment. The data was provided by Art Chemical Analyst Caroline Bouvier.
Although both light and sound are measured in Hertz (Hz) they are vastly different in range. Light frequencies waves are so high that they exist far beyond the limits of human hearing. To convert the light peak Hz data into a range within human hearing, it was necessary to make these raw peak frequency numbers smaller (reduce them). Therefore each was divided by 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion)! This enabled the composer to assign the pigments' light frequency value, to that of a nearest sound tone frequency number, in a consistent manner.
These tones were then used to compose melodies with. As each colour has a unique set of light frequencies, a unique set of sound tones result from this. It is those tones which formed the basis of the melodies per colour. These melodies influenced the creation of other musical features, such as the harmony and rhythm.
The exact order of light frequency values per colour pigment set was not important. It is the collection of peak frequencies per pigment which provide its fingerprint. The composer nevertheless, only allowed himself to use the notes in the exact same order that the computer systems generated per set. Apart from a creative challenge, he felt it also brings a certain added closeness between data and music.