COLOR ROOM
Can you see sounds? Can you hear colors? In Richie Smith's Color Room, the deeply personal experience of synesthesia is brought into real life in a dazzling display. This multimedia experience uses live guitar playing that controls color-changing lights all around the room. Every chord, key, and harmony has its own unique color palette and changes as each note moves. As the room fills with each vivid hue, hear your favorite paintings turn into music in real time, see your favorite songs become lush colorscapes, and experience new compositions that blur the lines between visual art and music.
Color Room is designed to be a modular performance experience; by using LED fixtures that can be modified to throw light in any space, Color Room can be performed in any venue or setting. Whether it be a gallery, a theater, or even a living room, this hypnotic and ethereal experience can fit any room. The space itself can inform performances; shows in a gallery can involve the artwork in the space, where works can become graphic scores and colors are chosen to create harmonies and melody. Performances in larger spaces can give more room to appreciate the palettes and glacial harmonies of Richie's original compositions. Smaller spaces can allow for audience interaction and requests, whether they be musical or visual art, can fuel exciting and engaging performances.
Color Room began as a passion project for Richie to express his own experiences with synesthesia. To Richie, every chord has its own color, every key has its own hue, every note adds a new splash of color to the abstract landscape. To accomplish this, every note on each string is programmed with its own unique color that matches Richie's internal vision and each string on the guitar controls its own strand of light. From the box that allows the strings to be separated to the lighting rig, Richie built and programmed everything specifically for this project to exist.