Image: Catching the light (Jacqueline Foss/Getty Images)

To accompany the Colour of Sound series on ABC Radio National I was asked to write an article describing the process behind the compositions and text. You can read this now as a featured article on the ABC Radio National website.

Here is a short excerpt:

Colour envelops us. A multitude of hues, both vivid and subtle, silently enter our visual system and affect our emotional states. We attach meaning to them; they become signifiers on a personal and cultural level.

And there is sound, a mercurial force. Its physical nature is elusive; once pronounced it ceases to exist. Sonic trails pass through us, raising emotions from personal histories.

A division: deaf to the world

We live in a visually-oriented culture, navigating the world with our eyes. This reliance on sight illustrates a disconnection that exists between the senses. Here listening is reduced to a secondary position.

The consequence? Our capacity to understand the spaces we inhabit is limited. Performing our daily tasks, this visual bias leaves us living in the shadows.

How much richer our lives would be if we perceived layers of visual and sonic matter equally. A rush of sound would reinvigorate our spatial perceptions and if we listened closely, really closely, might we hear the sound of colour?

To read the article in full please go to ABC Radio National.