See me, feel me, touch me, heal me: On the Multimodal Experience of Sound

This panel will examine how people associate colour, shape, and touch to sound, how human sensory experience varies across individuals, and how associations between the senses support uniquely human forms of communication like language and music. The online event will begin with streaming audio and video recordings from Xenia Pestova Bennett’s (University of Nottingham) semi-improvised work Glowing Radioactive Elements (2018, 25’), which consists of five interwoven movements, each exploring different timbral techniques for the Magnetic Resonator Piano. The MRP is an innovative instrument designed by Andrew McPherson (QMUL Augmented Instruments Lab). Electromagnets are suspended above the piano strings without coming into contact with the mechanism, allowing resonance to be “shaped” from the keyboard while retaining the use of the original action. The five pieces include continuous control of the resonance, pitch bends, harmonic glissandi, envelope shaping and a unique “stutter” of the MRP mechanism, an unintentional scanner by-product. Each movement is associated with a radioactive element and its “colour” signature. To examine how these quasi-synaesthetic poetic associations encourage interplay between artistic expression and listener perception, the panel will initiate a conversation with audience members, recording their perceptions of sound-colour and other crossmodal associations evoked during the performance. Following the streaming, Xenia Pestova Bennett and Andrew McPherson will be joined in conversation by timbre researcher Charalampos Saitis (QMUL Centre for Digital Music; panel coordinator), cognitive linguist Christine Cuskley (Newcastle University), artist-performer and researcher Camille Baker (University for the Creative Arts), sound-led performance artist Julie Rose Bower (QMUL Drama), and artist-researcher Sebastian Löbbers (QMUL Media & Arts Technology).

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Image: Xenia Pestova Bennett performs © Cath Du Puy