Synaesthesia is what neurology calls it when one sense spills into another: seeing sound, hearing colour, tasting a word. Synesthos began as a simple question about that. If a sound could paint, what exactly would it paint?
The project is a collaboration with the multidisciplinary artist D'Clair, who approached Testas to create a visual counterpart for his musical performances.
The canvas listens to a microphone or to any audio file and answers in real time. It is not a music visualiser, the kind that pulses along with the bass and forgets everything else. It is a painting system: every sonic event leaves an actual mark on the surface, and the marks accumulate. Splashes, washes, lines, drips. What remains at the end of a song is a painting generated by translating what was played into mathematical formulas.
The result is an instrument that never repeats itself. Two people playing the same song produce different paintings; so does the same person playing it twice. There are palettes, paper types, control over the brush's behaviour, and a zen mode that clears away the entire interface and leaves only the paint.
It is currently still in development, on its way to becoming something even more proprietary.