Synaesthesia

Mike Gondry, in the Daft Punk ‘around the world’ video, he uses synaesthesia.

Kandinsky, in the 1920s, was famous for his synaesthesia work, many of his paintings and stage work, used a variety of colours and timbres to establish different meanings, between different musical instruments. Kandinsky said that his connections between these colours and timbres he had selected had no scientific basis but was founded on his own personal feelings and culture. According to Kandinsky, the table below shows the connection between each colour and musical timbre.

He suggested that the following colours represtented the musical timbres: 

Colours	Musical Timbres
Yellow	Trumpet; Sound of the fanfare
Azure	Flute
Blue	Deep sounds from the organ
Dark Blue	Cello
Very Dark Blue	Bass
Green	Middle tones of the violin
White	Temporary pause
Black	Conclusive pause
Grey	Lack of sound
Bright Red	Fanfare; tube/horn
Crimson Red	Medium an deep tones of the cello
Orange	Middle bells of the church; strong contralto voice; viola
Violet	English horn; bagpipe
Deep Purple	Deep tones of the woodwinds; bassoon

Arthur Bliss, was influenced by the ideas of colour music. In 1922 he wrote the colour symphony.

In the around the world video by daft punk, it is made up of different people showing the different parts of the music. The people in the middle represent the heavy bass, dancing in time the heavy bass drums. The swimming costumes show synchronized swimmers, completely in time with each other. These are the high-pitched register. The taller people made up of 2 people have additional sections to them, evoking how they add to the music, the bass guitar show the low register. The skeletons are the guitars, and the robots are the vocals. The steps around the edge are the scale with the lyrics. The backing on the staging, changes colour due to the time throughout the song, going dark blue for instrumentation, white for when its only the beat and when there’s the lyrics it’s a lighter blue. 

The choreography shows just isolated music, evoking how each component of the music is individual and stand alone.

The inner circle of the video demonstrates the planet earth, the outside shows out of space being all black. And how the dancing are ‘walking around the world.’ Everything has to work together in harmony to create music, harmony and beauty.


In most music videos, they tend to stick to the more natural semiotics associated with colours and sound, for example black is depression, white is purity and virginity. In our music video we are going to incorperate the synaesthesia by following the natural conventions of a media text. This includes thinking of the connotations associated with each colours and images. For example, we're going to use lighting that evokes the mood.

Ellie