Pink Noises

Working with the basic principle that people in general are hardwired to receive and distinguish certain unique hues of colour, the artist collective Instant Coffee’s ongoing research project Pink Noise drives at colliding and provoking the basic sensory mechanics of colour and sound to form temperamental emotional connections.

Pink Noises is an aesthetic experiment based around the concept of visualizing sound. Pink noise is said to be frequency of sound that has a relationship to human biorhythms, and possesses the ability to mask background noise; it is increasingly used by companies to increase productivity among employees, relieve stress as a therapeutic device, in education it is used to focus one’s attention, and functions to block other shaper sounds. It has no rhythm, but has curves and is imaged as a colour.

Pink noise is a variant of white noise, which has been reduced in volume and density at each octave. Pure white noise is a combination of all octaves, with each octave doubling in frequency. With pink noise there is the possibility to select a frequency. The number of octaves can be reduced. It may only contain six octaves or be played at six decibels. Its differing and speculative form ultimately results in a noise sound wave that has equal energy at every octave. For Instant Coffee these variables are an opening where sound waves can translate into colour and solid mass. There is a pseudo-science (a space between art, science, design and the absurd) that the artist collective is interested in bringing to the forefront. This is something they see as positive. Science itself has definite limits while pseudo-science is inexhaustible.

Instant Coffee Pink Noises App was designed by Instant Coffee in collaboration with Programmer Kevin Doole. Sounds produced with The Pinc Lincolns and Fortunato Durutti Marinetti.

Key Support was provided by grunt gallery, Canada Council for the Arts and the province of British Columbia Creative Economies initiative.