this multi-week assignment explores the intersection of color and sound through playful experimentation and collaborative constraints — inspired by surrealist games, fluxus scores, and early abstract animation. you will be assigned a folder of sounds from a randomly assigned classmate. working with another person's audio forces you into unexpected territory: much like a surrealist exquisite corpse, you must synthesize disparate elements into something new without full control over your material.
you will create an abstract animation that makes sound visible through color, treating both as raw materials for perceptual play rather than vehicles for narrative or representation.
// critical rule
you may not use your own audio. you will be assigned a folder of sounds from another student's upload — that is the material you work with. think of it as a found-object constraint. you are not limited to using everything in the folder; select what speaks to you.
audio upload deadline: if you have already uploaded your audio to the class drive folder, you're good — you will receive points. if you have not yet uploaded, make sure all audio is uploaded by classtime next week.
this is a collaboration project. you are inspiring another classmate and providing the raw material they will have to work with. make it something good. you are a community.
// what you can do with the audio
the audio you receive should remain recognizably itself — the goal is not to erase its origin but to work with it as a material. think of a sculptor who finds a piece of driftwood: you can cut, sand, and arrange it, but it's still driftwood.
// allowed edits ok / not ok
✓cut, trim, rearrange — select sections, reorder fragments, remove silence or keep it
✓repeat / loop — loop a fragment, create repetition, build rhythm from a moment
✓slow down or speed up — time-stretch the recording; a bird call becomes a groan
✓change pitch — pitch shift up or down without changing speed (or with)
✓fade, volume envelope — automate volume over time; let sounds breathe or swell
✓use AI to organize or assist editing — AI can help you identify beats, align cuts, or structure a timeline. AI as editor's assistant is fine
✓use AI to generate a rhythmic pattern or structure — e.g. letting AI detect transients and suggest loop points
✗AI sound transformation or generation — do not use AI to regenerate, resynthesize, or fundamentally alter the character of the sound (no suno, no elevenlabs voice cloning, no AI "enhance" that replaces the source material)
✗adding new sounds — do not layer in additional recordings, samples, music, or sound effects that are not in your assigned folder. work only with what you were given
✗making it unrecognizable — extreme granular synthesis, spectral morphing, or heavy convolution that erases the source entirely is out of bounds. the original material should still be audible in the final audio track
if in doubt, ask yourself: "can you still hear that this was a voice / a door / a keyboard / rain?" if yes, you're good.
// found sound + musique concrete — artists to listen to
"found sound" and musique concrete composers treat recorded material — field recordings, everyday objects, voices, machines — as the primary compositional material. this is your lineage for the audio work:
pierre schaefferpierre henrybjork (homogenic, medulla)william basinskialvin lucierchris watsonhildegard westerkampfrancisco lopezmatmossteve reich (early tape works)holly herndonla monte young
// for example
bjork's "human behaviour" uses insect sounds and accordion as rhythmic material. "medulla" is built almost entirely from human vocal sounds — clicks, breath, chewing — radically manipulated but still recognizable as voice. this is the spirit of the constraint.
// weekly structure
01audio creation + upload→ audio file
create an original sound composition and upload it to the class google drive folder. this audio goes into the shared pool and will be assigned to a classmate — you will not use your own audio.
duration: 30–90 seconds
format: .wav or .mp3
content: field recordings, musical fragments, synthesized sounds, vocal experiments, found sound, noise, silence punctuated by sound — anything goes
// already uploaded?
if your audio is already in the folder, you're set — you will receive points automatically. everyone else: upload before classtime next week. this is a community project. your audio is someone else's raw material.
02audio assignment + r&d document→ r&d document
you will be assigned a folder of sounds from a randomly selected classmate. listen through everything in the folder carefully. select the audio (or fragments) you will work with and complete your research and development documentation.
listen through your entire assigned folder
select what you will work with — you don't have to use all of it
consider: what does this sound suggest? what does it resist? what colors does it evoke?
// for r&d question #6
why did you choose this audio? what are your intentions for working with it? describe the sonic qualities — its texture, rhythm, density, emotional character — and explain how you plan to translate these into color and form.
03animatic / storyboard→ animatic or storyboard
map the structure of your animation. show how color will transform in response to sound over time. treat this as a visual score — a set of instructions for how perception will unfold.
show how color will shift, pulse, layer, or transform in response to sound
indicate timing of major transitions and perceptual events
consider: what happens during silence? during density? at transitions?
format options: hand-drawn storyboard with timecodes, rough animatic with audio, or a visual timeline/score in the fluxus tradition
create your final animation — a perceptual experiment that makes sound visible through color.
duration: 30–90 seconds (matching your selected audio)
resolution: 1920×1080 minimum
format: .mp4 or .mov
software: your choice — after effects, blender, touchdesigner, processing, hand-drawn/scanned, etc.
visual approach: abstract to non-objective only (see definitions below)
// expanded animation encouraged
you are strongly encouraged to let your animation escape the screen. consider projecting onto surfaces, objects, or bodies — displaying across multiple devices — embedding in a sculpture or installation — using the internet as a canvas (web-based, AR, social media). if you take this route, submit photo/video documentation (2–5 min or 10–20 images) plus a 200–300 word statement explaining your spatial strategy.
"constraints don't limit creativity — they reveal it. the assignment's rules are invitations to discover what happens when you give up control."
// student checklist — color/sound synesthesia
week 01 — audio upload
week 02 — audio assignment + r&d
audio editing — rules check
week 03 — animatic / storyboard
weeks 04–05 — final animation
// key definitions
abstraction
abstract art simplifies, distorts, or reduces recognizable subjects from the visible world. forms may be discernible — something round might suggest a sun, something vertical a figure — but are never specific or identifiable. emphasis is on formal relationships: shape, color, gesture, rhythm.
think: picasso's treatment of the human body — you recognize a figure, but not a person. kandinsky's landscapes dissolve into color fields while retaining suggestions of depth and horizon.
non-objective
non-objective art has no reference to the visible world whatsoever. it deals purely with formal elements: color, shape, line, texture, composition, movement, rhythm. there is no subject being abstracted. the work exists entirely as an exploration of visual perception.
think: rothko's color fields, mondrian's grids, the purely chromatic experiments of color field painters. the work is about the experience of seeing itself.
why no realism?
realism anchors us in narrative, recognition, and representation. this assignment asks you to prioritize sensation over recognition — to work with color and time as your primary expressive materials, making work that acts on the viewer with the same immediacy as temperature or sound.
synesthesia
a neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers another — hearing colors, seeing sounds, tasting shapes. this assignment asks you to construct it artificially: build a system where sound generates color, where audio becomes chromatically visible.
// evaluation criteria
30% — conceptual rigor: understanding of perceptual experience over representation, thoughtful response to synesthetic principles, clear connection between color choices and sonic properties
30% — formal execution: sophisticated use of color relationships and transitions, compelling audio-visual integration, technical proficiency, attention to saturation and timing
20% — experimental ambition: takes risks with unfamiliar audio, explores perceptual phenomena, pushes beyond literal or illustrative approaches
20% — process + development: completion of all weekly deliverables, evidence of refinement from animatic to final, engagement with feedback
// questions to sit with
how does silence function as color?
can whispers be translucent? can screams be opaque?
what does rhythm look like chromatically?
how do you visualize texture, density, or spatial depth in sound?
what happens at the threshold between two colors, two sounds?
can color bleed, pulse, or reverberate like sound?
what happens when you deliberately mistranslate the audio?
// abstract sound animation artists
oskar fischingernorman mclarenmary ellen butelen lyejordan belsonstan brakhageryoji ikedacarsten nicolaiyoko ono (fluxus scores)george brechtjohn cage
"the best fluxus composition is a strongly simple one, which allows a single event, object, or document to be experienced freshly in a non-symbolic, non-representational way." — george maciunas