Helen Mac Mahon
Visual Artist
SPECTRA (2017)
Video of the cymatic imagery created by seven musical notes.
Dimensions Variable
Spectra was exhibited in MART Gallery Dublin as part of the exhibition Transmission. Curated by Matthew Nevin and Ciara Scanlan Transmission was a two person show with Sofie Loscher.
The video piece shows the energy patterns created by seven musical notes, those of the musical scale. The work was one of a series of works exploring ways of perceiving everyday elements in surprising ways. In this work Spectra presented sound as a visual and colours as sounds or more specifically, musical notes.
The two elements of sound and colour are united through the scientific research of Isaac Newton. It was Newton who first decided on the number seven for the colours of the visible spectrum. In addition to this he assigned each colour a musical note. Like many scientists who preceeded him Newton was a practicing Alchemist. His naming of the seven colours and the assigning of the seven musical notes was deepy rooted in alchemical symbolism where there are seven stages in the alchemical process of transformation.

A still from the cymatic video clip SPECTRA projected onto the sculptural installation Wall - Untitled (2017).
Short excerpt from SPECTRA