Assignment 2: Colour of Sound.

In this assignment we explore the strong correlation between sound and colour. It is not clear whether we all see colour the same way but what is clear is some sound is automatically associated with a certain colour by the brain. In fact some people, known as synesthetes, are able to see the colour of the sound. See Video immediately below.

 

 Synesthesia

In this assignment we associate the colour red with fire and hence the sound of fire; green with nature and hence the sounds of nature; blue with water and the sound of water rustling by; white with air and hence the sound of air.

WIND

FIRE CLICK TO HEAR

WATER

NATURE

Some of these sounds were available on Freesound, a royalty free sound database. Using audacity, I was able to add all the sounds together by copying and then pasting them, a simple but efficient process, and before each sound starts the colour that the sound represents is spoken in the microphone and recorded. I then saved the sound in wave format and  upload it to soundcloud. Here in the final sound.


Final Sound.

Alien Invasion or Human Evacuation?

This is the submission for the first assignment.

Alien Invasion or Human Evacuation?

Original by Jacquet-Lagreze

Procedure
The original photo is from Romain Jacquet-Lagreze, which is a one-point perspective photo with a vanishing point roughly at its center. It's an ideal starting picture to photoshop to give the illusion of objects descending or ascending the sky. This is why the photoshopped image is titled, Alien Invasion or Human Evacuation?

As shown in the screenshot below, a vortex is added right where the vanishing point is located. The original vortex picture itself came with a black background that could not fit in the landscape. To make the background transparent, a mask is added to the vortex layer. Using a soft brush I remove the black background from the mask (anything that is coloured black becomes transparent). This is a better method than just using an eraser, as it does not make any alteration to the original layer itself but rather to the mask. Were I to use an eraser any modification made to the original vortex layer would modify it permanently and the original layer is lost, which could be troublesome if a mistake is made and there is a need to recover the original layer.

Vortex and Mask

For the second part of the photoshop (see screenshot below), I used spheres which represent some sci-fi contraption that allow people or material to be transported in or out the vortex. Nearest to the vortex are a couple of the smallest spheres. To achieve this, I copy the sphere from a picture which conveniently has a transparent background and paste it into the skyscraper background, making sure the layer is below the vortex layer but above the main skyscraper background. Then I resize the sphere and move it to where I wanted. I then duplicate the sphere layer and move the copied layer so as to have the couple of spheres hanging just below the vortex. I repeat the process to create larger and larger pairs of sphere. The larger the pair, the further apart in accordance to the perspective of the plane..

Spheres perspective