Tone and colour are the same wave
Sound is a wave in the air. Light is a wave in a field. Only forty doublings separate them: concert A raised forty octaves stops being heard and starts being seen — as a warm red.
The whole system stands on this bridge: hue carries the pitch, lightness the octave, saturation the force of the touch. A bass C is deep blue, a soprano C almost white; forte is saturated, pianissimo barely a shadow.
Five views of one wheel
Twelve notes can be laid on a colour wheel by more than one rule — and each is true in its own way. A musician hears the circle of fifths. A physicist sees the spectrum. A painter looks for complements. Nature builds by the golden angle. The fifth view is yours.
There is no one right answer. There are four true ones — and one of your own.
Try them on the wheel above. Same piece, different mapping, different painting.
Two directions
Music → painting
Play, upload or hum. Every chord is a brushstroke; the same song gives the same painting, every time. Twenty-four painters each see it their own way.
Painting → music
The rule runs backwards too. Load a photo, a Guernica or a child's drawing — and Paintiano plays it. Twelve composers recompose it in their own voice.
Golden-ratio geometry
The canvas format and the basic cell of every painting come from φ = 1.618 — the ratio nature uses from the sunflower to the galaxy. Not because it is pretty. Because it is the same ratio the ear feels as consonance.
The author
Rasto Ďurica · Raf Fel
Physicist by training, entrepreneur by trade, artist by compulsion. Born in Slovakia, ten years in Germany, now in Bratislava. Co-author of Labyrint, an exhibition where physics met art; author of the Paintiano book; and of the app you are about to open.
The whole story — from Pythagoras through Newton and Scriabin to the piano in your pocket — is in the book. The one-page summary is free; the full book is free on request.
Try PaintianoBook summary