The Third Synaesthetic Wave in Modern Art


'Frans Evers Frans Evers

The exploration of the visual world by composers, and of the aural world by visual artists, is one of the recurrent trends in the history of modern art and music. Synaesthetic metaphor, synaesthetic imagery and synaesthetic sound have been explored by the avantgarde since the middle of the 19th century. Most often these cross-overs, however, were characterized by extra-disciplinary explorations of artists and musicians, which resulted frequently in highly criticized extravanganza, like in Scriabin's use of the voice, called "Luce". Rather than trying to integrate multi-disciplinary elements and dimensions, the present Audio Art Movement distinguishes itself from earlier synaesthetic attempts by being in-disciplinary:

The piece is a poem is a sculpture is a statue is an image is a voice.