FM Paint
Interactive application, macOS + Win, 2021
FM Paint is an application designed on MaxMsp that grants the user an experience based on the artist’s condition, synesthesia, through ‘painting with sound’. The application uses FM synthesis with corroborated colours, generating sounds that match a synesthete experience.
The user can pick a colour, a pen size and digitally paint on the canvas creating a soundscape that fluctuates in frequency as they create their art. Alternatively the user can choose the randomize colour mode, where the colours change automatically as they paint.
As the paintbrush moves across the canvas, the sound follows the movement of the brush using the stereo field. This is to mimic the artist’s condition of visualising different placements of colour depending on where the sound is coming from.
The design of the user interface is based on an early version of Microsoft Paint, with its limited functionality, to emphasise the simplification of digitally representing synesthesia.
Although this is not an accurate depiction of synesthesia, as the condition differs for each person, this piece gives an insight into the artist’s experience.
Google Drive link to application’s: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11a6ot3j4mKJLrWDFOeBrjifzGyjcQJQj?usp=sharing
