Towards new artistic paths within contemporary synesthetic research: Marco de Biasi’s phonochromatic system

Could historical avant-gardes still drive significantly innovative and interdisciplinary research? And, if so, is the current aesthetic research contributing to the evolution of this theoretical inheritance? The Phonochromatic System elaborated by Marco De Biasi (b.1977) seems to give an affirmative answer to these questions. Rooted in the visual and musical theories of Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten and Arnold Schoenberg, and an inheritor of a historical synesthetic quest with origins that date back to the sixteenth century, this Italian composer, painter and guitar player investigates the nature of the relationship between sound and color along with the synesthetic possibilities allowed by new technologies in the development of new artistic paths. An introduction to De Biasi’s synesthetic work, and particularly his Phonochromatic System, shows the correspondence between his composition and painting through a selection of visual, musical and synesthetic examples, including some of the artist’s most recent works and unpublished material. The appendix includes two manifestos, which provide a summary of De Biasi’s synesthetic theory set out in his own words: the Manifesto of the Movimento Artistico di Sintesi Sinestettica (SIN-E), founded by De Biasi and Max Ciogli in 2010, and De Biasi’s Manifesto fonocromatico (2018).