La Monte Young, american contemporary music artist, and the visual artist and musician Marian Zazeela, designed together the first visual and sound installation called «Dream House» in 1963. Marian Zazeela has developed a system of evolving and colorful lights that she places on mobiles. Monte Young uses various sine wave oscillators, oscilloscopes, amplifiers and loudspeakers to produce continuous frequency environments. The music played, made up of held notes that can be extended indefinitely, makes suspended mobiles react in a tiny way. The projected shadow, resulting from the combination of several lights, creates new three-dimensional shapes.
When you enter this space bathed in light and music, you literally immerse yourself in sound and colour to perceive the nuances. Sitting or standing, immobile or evolving at their own pace within the space, each visitor can appreciate the sound modulations caused by their own movements, however minute they may be. The viewer-listener sees the music as much as he listens to the color, in a pure synesthetic perception.
Synaesthesia is when two or more senses are associated (in a sustainable way). For example, the so-called "color graphemes" synaesthesia (which would represent a major % of synaesthesia) means that the letters of the alphabet (or numbers) are perceived as colored. Until now, its neurological origins are still unknown. Thus, that particular feeling during my visit in this room, conceived by La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela, reminded me numerous research works about synaesthesia.
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela
Sound With/In, 1989.
Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France. 2019.