Zack Smithey

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These paintings are snapshots of the intermingling of sounds from various instruments.  The “Materialization of Sound” series seeks to bring permanence to an impermanent medium. Sound transcends space and time. The function of this phase of the series is to stimulate the viewer into conjuring sounds in their brains simply by using their eyes.

A sound is just the perception of a vibration, therefore without intelligence sounds do not exist. Only vibrations exist. We evolved to hear vibrations and interpret them as sounds because that was evolutionarily advantageous to our survival. If the nerves of our ears were connected to the occipital cortex, then we would see colors when vibrations entered our ears. There are indirect connections between the various parts of the brain. Music and other sounds can affect our imaginations and our imagination is connected to the various parts of the brain that control and process vision.

It’s the indirect connection between vision and hearing that I am attempting to stimulate. I want the viewer to explore the option of hearing my art through their eyes. In this phase of the series I am not telling the viewer what to hear. I am asking them what they hear.

The white paint that is always encroaching on the color is silence. The paintings are always in various stages of being destroyed by silence. Much like Newton’s Laws of Motion, a vibration will continue to vibrate until acted upon by another force. In this sense, silence is viewed as a force that perpetually crushes sound into nonexistence, the antisound.