What Sound does a Color Make? presents ten contemporary works by an internationally diverse group of artists and explores the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media. For some people, a stimulus to one of the five senses evokes the sensation of another sense, as when hearing a sound produces the visualisation of a colour.

Image: Atau Tanake, Bondage, 2004, in What Sound does a Color Make? at Govett Brewster - 20 May - 23 July, 2006What Sound does a Color Make? presents ten contemporary works by an internationally diverse group of artists and explores the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media. For some people, a stimulus to one of the five senses evokes the sensation of another sense, as when hearing a sound produces the visualisation of a colour.

Image: Atau Tanake, Bondage, 2004, in What Sound does a Color Make? at Govett Brewster - 20 May - 23 July, 2006For contemporary audio visual artists, the possibilities inspired by this phenomenon, known as synesthesia, have expanded with the advent of recent digital technologies that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer bits.

This highly engaging exhibition encourages thought about the ways that visual and aural stimuli are electronically, digitally and perceptually connected. The presentation of What sound does a color make? adds to the Govett-Brewster's record of stimulating, experiential exhibitions, beginning with the Gallery's 1970 opening exhibition Real time, a light and sound environment by Leon Narbey. Len Lye also had an interest in human cognition and perception, and many of his films and sculptures shown at the Gallery since his first exhibition in 1977 use light, sound, colour and movement to elicit changes in the physical and perceptual state of viewers.

What sound does a color make? features work by: Scott Arford, Jim Campbell, D-Fuse, Granular-Synthesis (Kurt Hentschlager & Ulf Langheinrich), Gary Hill, Thom Kubli, Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) in collaboration with D-Fuse, Fred Szymanski, Atau Tanaka, Steina Vasulka, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Stephen Vitiello, Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut.

What Sound does a Color Make? is a travelling exhibition organised and circulated by independent Curators International (iCI), New York and curated by Kathleen Forde. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, by grants from The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; and Institut fūr Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; and by an in-kind donation from Philips Electronics North America.