Overwhelming emotion: translating emotion and music into color

There's something magical about inspiration.

Feeling that burst of excitement, that feeling that something great is just around the corner and all you have to do is look for it. An idea or an image or a melody is hanging there just out of reach, and you can almost literally feel your subconscious racing to get that moment of insight to surface.

(surprisingly, supernovas kinda look like what I'd imagine the brain looking like during a moment of insight. Dunno if that's actually true, but it'd be cool).

The reason behind this romantic rambling is just that: right now, I can feel a moment of insight coming on.

That may seem a little high brow and like I'm trying to be self-aware blah blah blah.... but I just feel this overwhelming urge to create and there's this image or scene that's trying to come together in my head and it hasn't surfaced yet but I feel it coming.

What pushed me to the mental space I am in right now is a couple of pieces of music from the movie Her.

If you haven't seen this movie, I cannot recommend it enough. Controversial relationships with operating systems aside, Her gives us this glimpse into a future that is rare in popular media. It shows us a near future that is hopeful and warm, a world where computers aren't trying to destroy the human race (coughcough basically all other futuristic/dystopian movies that show humankind as desperately trying to stay alive coughcough).

The two specific pieces that made me freeze in my tracks? Song on the Beach and Photograph.

These two compositions have basically taken over my thoughts right now (I'm listening to Song on the Beach, and my fingers are typing on autopilot right now because my attention is utterly captivated by the gorgeous, melancholy, beautiful music. I'll have to edit this later, because I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm writing).

Emotions? Happiness, intense sadness, absolute breathlessness, awe, wistfulness, borderline despair... this overwhelming feeling of melancholy.

Okay, this is getting a bit much. I need to just listen. I'll be right back.

**** Alright, I'm checking back in. It's now about an hour later and my brain has recovered enough that I can form coherent sentences. And I might've gone through the entire Her soundtrack... whoops.

Anyway, these two songs, as well as the concept and color scheme in Her, has given me a bunch of ideas for paintings. I really really really want to create pieces that focus on translating a) emotion into color and b) music into colour.

Oftentimes I find myself wishing I could compose and photograph and illustrate and animate all the things I have in my head, but I'm limited by my own artistic abilities. I can paint, but not at the level at which I can put exactly what I'm imagining onto paper.

And there are limits to fine arts.

The paint can't move, can't show emotion or thought or movement over time, like animation or film can. (Unless you're Ivana Besevic or another amazing artist, then your art can do anything and everything).

And so many of my ideas incorporate movement, whether it be through dance or changes in expression.

There was this one piece I wanted to create, and the idea behind it was "the birth of an idea". I wanted to paint the birth of an idea at a neurological level, show neurons firing, fragments of thought shooting from one cell to another, building up through the subconscious until it bursts in this explosion of color and insight and amazement into the consciousness.

But I can't animate.

I can only draw and paint, and that's static images. So there was no way I could show this "birth of an idea" the way I see it in my head. I had the thought that I could paint it in stages, maybe do a polyptych. The first panel would show the initial bursts of synaptic transmission, the second would zoom out to show hundreds of neurons firing, the third would show this buildup of white (that would be the idea at its "fetal" stage), and the fourth would be this explosion of color that would represent insight.

Since my new unit in my independent study is on affective learning, I though this would be a great concept to incorporate in my art.

Focusing on showing emotion through color and expression and construction of the different pieces. The soundtrack from Her is definitely going to be the focus for the first few paintings. I just can't get it out of my head and there are so many places I could take it.