Traveling a total of 9,000 kilometers in a 1986 Renault van called Veda, CromaSomos crossed from Lisbon to the other end of Europe to the Balkan countries, to participate in 7 festivals, from Romania to Italy, bringing CromaSonic experiments to instigate the senses and feelings, with music sets, soundpainting, art installations, spontaneous workshops and laboratories.
Sunflowers and the Rising Sun: Arriving in Romania aboard Veda.
Guilherme Aguiar, Vig Morã and Mixirica (a kitten) were present throughout the journey, which began with Rezm Orah and Dasha Lavrennikov, and was also joined by unexpected visitors along the way.
WAHA FESTIVAL: FEELINGS LAB
TRANSYLVANIA, ROMANIA
An unusual laboratory took place at the WAHA Festival's Agora Art Gallery, in the middle of the forests of Transylvania: a laboratory testing feelings, made by clown scientists.
Participants identified shapes and colors in aromatic essences, as well as in "little dreams" that painted specific shapes and colors in each person's imagination.
SONS OF GAYA: PAINTING MUSIC
Live music and painting experience with Romanian Lizzie Wonder on Didgeridoo and Hang Drum and Vig Morã on electric guitar and loop station.
The artist Guilherme Aguiar and the Romanians Rube and Rodica painted live colors and shapes that they felt in the music.
TRANSYLVANIA CALLING: DOWNTEMPO SYNAESTHETIC CIRCUS
ROMANIA
Amid exuberant nature, CromaSomos brought a true Downtempo Synaesthetic Circus to the Chill Out stage of this renowned European festival, an interactive experience led by 3 hours of original music composed live, based on cards containing colors and shapes which were chosen by the public.
The experience also included live dancing, soundpainting and painting on bodies and fabrics, according to the feelings perceived in the music.
Lizzie Wonder (Ro) and Vix Morã (Br) worked on loops and grooves with hang drum, didgeridoo, electric guitar and more. Guigs (Br) and Rube (Ro) painted what they felt about live music, while Alina and Gab (Ro) danced to the shapes and colors they heard.
You can listen to our set at:
TRANSYLVANIA CALLING: WORKSHOP
This sensorial awakening laboratory came as a follow-up to our presentation on the Chill Out stage, giving people the opportunity to delve deeper into our study, and understand in their own bodies the intrinsic relationships between colors, shapes, smells and music.
For this experience we used the Cromasonic Cards as a guide, an original product based on CromaSomos research and produced by Guilherme Aguiar and Vig Morã, which proved to be an intuitive, fun and effective way of communicating specific feelings and sensations in different art disciplines.
The musical part was conducted by Vig Morã and Lizzie Wonder, with Guilherme Aguiar in painting and Alina Ioana in movement.
7 CHAKRAS: LAB-ORATORIUM # 47
TOSCANY, ITALY
This Interactive Laboratory, installed in the Art Gallery of the 7 Chakras festival, brought synesthetic experiments appealing to different senses, with the intention of making people more aware of certain synesthetic relationships that people make usually unconsciously.
In particular, in one installation we studied the colors perceived in a sequence of aromatic essences selected to be as diverse as possible, in which people tied knots in colored threads underneath each bottle.
We made two other installations where people associated colors with abstract objects, one associating colors with certain words and shapes, and another studying in particular some special properties of red and blue, colors that have demonstrated greater disparity through the experiments we carried out previously.
Installations created largely with recycled materials on site.
STREET ART
Throughout our journey, we also carried out various performances on the streets of the countries we passed through, which included music, fire juggling, live painting, dance and more, often in collaboration with local artists.
Below, one of these presentations, by Vig Morã with musical loops and fire juggling, Guilherme Aguiar in live painting and with a local artist.
Images by Rodica Elena Der.
We started our season with the Dakini festival, on the Romanian Black Sea, then to the Transylvania forest, where we participated in the WAHA Festival, Sons of Gaya and Transylvania Calling.
After our "fruitful" stay in Romania, we traveled to Tuscany, Italy for the 7 Chakras Festival and then to neighboring Albania to bring our colors to a rainbow family gathering.