Music

What I found incredibly interesting about these readings was the connections to music through the scope of color perception. In, what was for me, one of the more clear examples in Arnheim’s text is the idea that color like notes in a key cannot be assumed to fit together just because the are complimentary in some way. Music is not about the sum of twelve notes, placed together because they sound good inherently, but the “giving [of] adequate shape to an intended content.”(349) Color must be handled the same way, though Arnheim quotes many proponents of design, color must be used to give shapes their....shape. Colors applied to shapes gives them meaning and personality, we have a visceral reaction to their hues. Also similar to music different palettes can go out of fashion, some colors may not be used to accent certain shapes in one period or another, however they as a concept are always applied to give “shape to an intended content”.
Sacks touches upon this theme with Mr. I, who cannot bear the everyday necessities (food, etc) because they lack the color markers to inform him of their use and importance. In a world suddenly without color Mr. I cannot see the forest not for the trees, but for their lack of shape. Sacks mentions that music became very dull for Mr. I, as he used to have “intense synesthesia” which allowed his brain to translate music in to images and colors. With his sudden color blindness there was nothing, his experience of music was with out form. In this case instead of using music as a structure to which we can compare the schema of color; color, or the lack of it, informs one mans entire perception of another sense he once enjoyed. Though the sections are brief, both authors alighted in me the idea that hearing and seeing are related in our ability to perceive one medium or the other. When Arnheim mentioned the structure of music, the theories of color cleared up for me entirely, even the idea of music that I have aided me greatly in sorting out the more obtuse ideas about color arrangements. Where as in Mr. I’s example I was able to relate and see the real issue he could have with not seeing the colors of the music. This is because I too posses a kind of synesthesia, music for me creates stories and some times I find that the colors of a scene in front of me leads me to create my own music to accompany it (which also makes me wonder, as Winnie mentioned, our cross-over between filmic viewing and the real world). If there were no colors to inform my music or no knowledge of music to accompany my study of color, I would be at a severe loss. To understand one, it would seem, is to have a platform on which you can base the understanding of the other. Both are ambiguous, both are subjected to categorization- but as Arnheim mentions the Western music notation system does not take in to account hundred of pitches that the human ear can hear, as a color wheel does not include all of the colors we can interpret on any given day. Both music and color are two different ends to a similar means, they both posses a power through which they can shape our perception (aurally and visually), through skilled composition and contrast. They are the meat to the bones of our lives.