The Influence of Music on Image Making: An Exploration of Intermediality Between Music Interpretation and Figurative Representation

Music evokes emotional responses; it also evokes visual imagery that is closely linked with the emotions evoked. To explore this inter-medial relationship, an experimental study was conducted with 70 students aged between 18 and 22 years. Depending upon audience response ratings, two contrast emotion (happy and sad-calm) evoking Indian classical instrumental (sitar) rāga music clips were selected previously. Both the music clips were played separately in two different classrooms and the participants were asked to respond to these clips through depiction of figurative paintings. The participants were also asked to provide a title for each of the paintings with some description about these depictions. Contents of the paintings were analyzed in terms of their themes, usage of lines and colors. Findings revealed that students depicted sad and calm emotional contents with dull-dark colors while listening to sad music and happy music made them depict happy emotional contents with light and bright colors. From semiotic analysis of the depicted paintings, we could clearly identify inter-medial relationships between certain visual features and certain musical elements like tempo. Findings revealed that emotions play a key role as a bridge in connecting these two mediums.