Projects: The Reverse Color Organ (RCO)

The Reverse Color Organ is an interactive toy that enables viewers to hear the sound of colors in a painting. Within the context of a prescribed root scale, calculated by the computer from analyzing the painting, the viewer can hear the difference in aural tones based on the relative warmth or coolness of a color within that painting in real time through their direction of the web camera. In essence, the viewer can now, like a conductor, play this painting.

This is the third version of The RCO (Reverse Color Organ). With each version I have collaborated with different composers. The RCO has been performed in conjunction with the Hartt School of Music's Contemporary Players, The Chelsea Museum in New York City's Interactive Media Culture Exposition, Duke University and the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, as well as several other colleges, galleries and music conservatories.

This newest version of the RCO, created in collaboration with interactive media artist Judson Wright, offers the computer's ability to connect the musical tone to the color, through numerical calculations, rather than relying on the artistic interpretation of earlier RCO versions' composers. With Judson, I am seeking to get closer to the true sound of cobalt blue within a painting, as it relates to its adjacent colors, and then to the overall composition.



Additional Materials:
Judson’s website:http://pump.org.in/arch/RCO/index.php?sect=ex2#ex2
Mike Feldman, first RCO http://makemusicmike.com/2008/11/14/reverse-color-organ/
Konrad Kaczmarek's website: http://www.konradkaczmarek.com/

 

The Reverse Color Organ (RCO) has been through three major collaborations and evolutionary phases.  The core idea in this project is that I seek to make audible, the sound of colors.  Interactive media artist/programmer Judson Wright has written a program that projects musical notation in real time as the viewer/camera wielder picks up colors with a webcam while scanning my paintings. 

The first live performance of the Reverse Color Organ will be at the New Art Center Gallery on Thursday June 16, 2011 at 6:30 pm.

http://newartcenter.net
http://pump.org.in/arch/RCO/index.php?sect=perf#perf

installation versions featured at
Synthetic Zero, POOL, HOAST and ArtHarlem in New York
. TWEET in South Norwalk, CT.

and a video version at Sguardi Sonori at the Planetario, Museo della Civita in Rome, Italy.

Performance version featured at the New Art Center in New York , performers: flute - Rosemary Birardi, krummhorn (early bassoon) - Robert Lepre, violin - Jim Altieri, classical guitar - Matt Marble, cello - Jessie Marino, basses (bowed and electric) - Tod Hedrick and Wilbo Wright - piano - Margaret Mills