An application invented by the Center Pompidou and Google Arts and Culture allows you to enter the mind of the Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky.
By clicking on the colors of his paintings, the sounds he associated with them begin to resonate: the trumpet for yellow, the violin for red, and so on ...
When you touch the yellow triangle, a trumpet sound seems to escape from the painting.
One press on red, and it's a violin piece.
What if you could listen to a painting?
This is what the Pompidou center offers thanks to the new "Play with Kandinsky" application.
The Russian artist used to paint his paintings in music, on Debussy or on jazz, associating a sound with each color.
A vision that the application wants to recreate.
"Kandinsky associated each color with a sound and an emotion"
"Kandinsky saw the color yellow as the sound of a trumpet, the color blue as the sound of an organ, the red as that of a violin. And with each of these colors was also associated an emotion. With yellow, a impertinent, cheeky emotion. In red, a more agitated emotion. In blue, something a little celestial, supernatural. It is an entry into the mind of Kandinsky ", explains Pierre Caessa, head of partnerships for Google Arts and Culture, which participated in this creation.
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To develop the application, the engineers used artificial intelligence and two musicians.
"They reinterpreted, with synthesizers and rhythm machines, what Kandinsky heard, but with today's instruments", explains Pierre Caessa.
You can even compose your own music by clicking on several triangles at the same time, with the key to a happy cacophony.