Media Synesthesia: Editing Sound With Photoshop

In an example of a kind of media synesthesia , John Keston uses Photoshop to process sound. The magic bridge between the audio and visual worlds that makes this possible is a program called Photosounder, which turns images to sound, and viceversa. After making an image file in Photosounder, Keston applies Photoshop filters and then exports the resulting image back out into an audio file.

Keston explains the process:

To test this concept I created a simple pattern with an electric piano patch and opened it in Photosounder. Without changing any settings I immediately saved the sound as a bitmap image. Next I opened the image in Photoshop and started experimenting with filters. Once I had some filtered images I loaded them back into Photosounder to see how they sounded. Gaussian blur and Liquefy created some unique effects, but my favorite of the bunch was Glowing Edges. This filter seems to transform the electric piano into a haunting choral passage.

Check out the results here.

[via MAKE]