“This loathing of color, this fear of corruption through color, needs a name: chromophobia.”

-David Batchelor

I see color in a way that is unique to my fellow colleagues. I have studied classical music for fifteen years, and from the time I was a child, I was taught to associate sound and tonality with color. Sound-Color Theory was first developed by Sir Isaac Newton when he assigned each color of the electromagnetic spectrum to the notes of the diatonic, or C Major, scale, giving each pitch on the piano its own color tonality. Renowned Music Educator, Zoltan Kodaly, transcribed this theory as a method to teach children to sing. I learned to read music by using a color-coded keyboard and colorized sheet music.

While this method successfully made me an accomplished musician, it has plagued me in art school. Because of my assocation between color and sound, I am almost completely unable to read full-color imagery. As I read the colors, I hear all of the sounds that they represent in my head, giving me quite a headache. Everytime I see a color photograph, it sounds like someone just sat down on all the piano keys at the same time. This is how color corrupts imagery for me. The more colors there are, the more corrupted it becomes, and now apparently, there is a phobia for that…