Ellen Hackl fagan

Projects: The Alphabet Game

Influenced by scientific theories-both real and imagined, music, and the intensity of cobalt blue, I build connections between color and sound in my paintings and performances.

The Alphabet Game may help us to determine whether a blended color/sound grammar already exists in our collective primary language.  In this game, participants select, from a wide range of colored squares, the color(s) that best represents the sound of each musical note in the familiar ABC Song melody.  I photo-document their color/sound alphabets and take notes in a journal. 

I compile the results from this documentation and am seeing some consistencies in certain color/sound selections emerge.  Through these playful interventions viewers share their thoughts and feelings about color, music and language in-depth.  I then average the color/sound selections from these performances and am painting series of alphabet paintings based on these generalizations. 

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