Collin L. Bradford and Professor Peter Everett, Visual Arts

My original proposal focused on the development and use of a system of colors that related to each other in mathematically harmonious ways. Light, like sound, has specific frequencies. A sound’s frequency determines its pitch and the ratios between the frequencies of two or more sounds determine the harmony or dissonance between them. Simpler ratios create more harmonious relationships; more complex ratios create dissonant relationships. For example, two sounds whose frequencies relate to each other in a 2 to 1 ratio (perhaps one is 440 Hz and the other is 880 Hz) form an octave. A slightly more complex ratio, such as 3 to 2 (which is called a fifth in music) creates a more complex harmony. A very complex ratio, like 41 to 9, creates dissonance.

Light’s frequency determines its color. I proposed to research how to create specific frequencies of light using a computer and projector and create a kind of ‘light music’ using those color ‘notes.’ We can hear if two notes are harmonious, i.e., if the relationship between their frequencies is a simple ratio. I wanted to find out if our eyes can be sensitive to these ratios like our ears are. (For a more complete explanation, see my proposal on file with the Honors Program)

The first challenge was figuring out how to create specific frequencies of light. Charts showing crude approximations of frequencies laid out on a color spectrum abound in textbooks, but I needed something more concrete than just using my eyes to approximate colors. After months of digging around, I found some graphs relating RGB (red, green, and blue components of a pixel’s color) to frequency, but the graphs weren’t accompanied by the equations used to create them. After writing to various professors and private-sector research scientists, I stumbled upon a program called Spectra that was written by Dan Bruton. (To see or download the program, which is free, go to www.efg2.com/lab or to www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/color.htm.) As is explained in a disclaimer that comes with the program, there is no direct one-to-one correlation between frequency or wavelength and RGB values. Nevertheless, the program did calculate, using the equations that were used to create the graphs I had found earlier, the best possible approximation of RGB values given a specific frequency. I figured that instruments are tuned all the time using good approximations (the ear is far from an exact scientific instrument) and the outcome is sufficient to maintain good harmony. Something as exact as Spectra should be more than good enough to get close to the harmonic ratios I was attempting to create.

I started making large color fields to project and then putting them into my video-editing software to make shifting color-field compositions. After exhausting myself trying to make something that was even remotely engaging, I realized, the pieces were extremely uninteresting. I think the reason for this might be that we do not have a cultural history of perceiving frequency ratios in light like we do in sound. Regardless of the reason, I stood at what seemed to be a dead end.

I put all of this aside to focus on painting for a semester. As I was working on the paintings I made I was thinking about physicality and our relationship to it. I think most people feel that there is some essence to their being that does not lie in the molecules that make up their bodies. Religious people call this essence a soul, but for many people it isn’t anywhere near as specific as the standard dualistic religious explanations make it seem. Regardless of how we understand it, we (humans) often seek ways to connect with or experience the non-physical. We often do this, paradoxically, through physical means, such as sensory deprivation, sensory overload, breathing techniques, repetitive sound or images, or corporeal pain (brought on, e.g., by fasting or long physical exercise like running and cycling). We often associate this disconnect from physicality with religion or spirituality since experiencing the non-physical brings us into a relationship with something larger than us outside of our world. The ways in which we experience the metaphysical vary, as do our reasons. Despite this variance, there is always a tension between our experience of the non-physical and slipping back into physicality; it seems that we are not completely in one or the other, but rather that we wander in and out of physical consciousness. I wanted to make paintings, and later, video pieces, that dealt with this ebb and flow of our consciousness of physicality.

I began to work once again with the ideas and color system I had developed, but now within the above-described conceptual framework. I made five pieces that dealt with different aspects of our relationship to physicality. The five pieces were exhibited in November of 2004.