AMBIENT I: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS
Brian Eno is the agreed-upon pioneer of the term and therefore genre of ambient music, especially with the 1978 release Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Barely relating to an airport at all, the idea of an album designed to bring peace and background music to a busy area is a concept that had existed before but had not been codified into a genre. I utilized my synesthesia to paint the colors and rhythms of Ambient 1 into a weird and otherworldly swirl and pattern of colors to compliment the strange, airy, and ‘ignorable’ music of Eno.
Cleveland Clinic defines synesthesia as “when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously”. For me, it is an innate association between musical notes and colors. I noted what colors I connected to each of the tracks four note primary rhythms and created the swatches on the back of the album, which I used these to paint gradients that I felt encapsualted each track. I then created a “musical steps” and video to demonstrate how the visuals are seen to me in my head.
PROCESS + SKETCHES