Subway Synesthesia
Integrating Art and Music with Revolution

by Kenji Kojima

Longstanding Revolution programmer Kenji Kojima has an exhibition "Subway Synesthesia" opening in New York, from Thursday 6th November to December 13th. This is a New York City Subway Photographs and Sound Installation of RGB Music which was created from RGB data of the photographs using Revolution. He extends a warm welcome to any Revolutionaries in the area to come to the opening on Thursday, November 6, 2008, 6-8:00pm - admission is free. Location AC [Direct] 547 W. 27th St, #519 New York, NY 10001.

Here is what he has to say about the artwork on display and how Revolution is involved.

This show combines two separate projects. One is my photographs "New York City Subway". You can see them here.

Taking New York Subway photos was banned until 2004 after 911. I started to shoot them in Spring 2005.

The exhibition also showcases my computer music creations, made using Revolution. These are an experimental type of music. It occurred to me that I could make three notes of harmony from the RGB value of an image. The first music I created was "RGB Matisse". It did make music, but it was too experimental. It was made by the Not GUI program. After that I created a GUI program "RGB MusicLab", in September 2007. This program is freeware, you are welcome to download it and make your RGB Music from any images.

Many artists and composers have tried to interpret music in a painting, or set a painting to music. However RGB Music is not an impression of a painting or a photograph of a musical variation. It composes a score from an image directly. You cannot force your musical plan on RGB Music. You can just make a path and pull out its musical notes. Many people love "RGB MusicLab", and many people hate it and say "It's useless." Try it for yourself and see what you think!

RGB MusicLab was improved little by little. Please visit the Website.

Last summer I noticed that the RGB value of an image could be a 3D drawing. A 3D object can be converted to RGB color values and music too. When I realised this, I made "RGB Space Music Player".

I used Revolution 3.0, UDI's makeSMF for creating MIDI sound, and Animation Engine 2 for 3D drawing.

The exhibition displays printed 130 diptychs(two images is one work) of New York City Subway photos, and sound installations which mix RGB Music tracks (moving image and sound of subway photos) and slide shows of subway photos. The sound installations are projected on a large image on a wall. The sound installations were made using Revolution too.