Can You Taste A Song?

What does the color yellow sound like? Can you see a sound? Can you taste a song?

In an innovative project designed to intertwine the senses, a group of students at Hyper Island in Stockholm, Sweden has combined food, music and digital technology to explore how to convert music into food. Can food be customized to your musical taste? The project Beatballs believes it can. Beatballs has set out to create personalized meatball recipes that taste like your favorite tunes, all in the hopes of heightening your musical enjoyment.

We’re all familiar with using music to enhance a meal, but transforming music into a meal? Now that’s something new. “We have developed a code that converts music into taste,” the Beatballs experts say.

Here’s how it works. Beatballs uses a custom code derived from the music intelligence company Echo Nest to algorithmically break down the various components of a song across such dimensions as tempo, tone, key and popularity. The data is then converted into ingredients for a meatball recipe tailor-made to increase the intensity and sensory pleasures of the song.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Actual scientific experiments have been conducted on the associations between variations in musical pitch and the perception of sour, sweet, bitter and salty tastes. The studies found, for example, that participants rated toffee as sweet while listening to a high pitched piano piece and bitter when eaten to the accompaniment of lower-pitched brass instruments.

Or consider synesthesia, a neurological condition where senses cross over. Patients with synesthesia can sometime hear colors and see sounds. It’s believed that the abstract painter Vassily Kandinsky had this condition.  And it kind of makes you wonder about Lennon’s magical world of marshmallow pies and marmalade skies (although there are other ways to encourage senses to cross over.)

Could it be true that each song has its own DNA? Can the act of tasting music contribute to our enjoyment? Beatballs points to the historical, cultural and social associations between music and food to show it can.  Think Cajun French music and spicy shrimp gumbo, “The Godfather” and pasta and winter season and mac & cheese and you get the idea. Translating music into taste represents a whole new level of cross-pollination between the two.

Whether or not meatballs are to your liking, the project does bear some consideration.  The group claims at least one successful pairing; that is, their garlic and chickpea meatball and Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy.” To evoke the high energy and mood of the song, the recipe includes dashes of lemon zest, curry and strawberries.  Not for everyone, but certainly some food for thought…

The Creators Project focuses on using technology in innovative ways to push the boundaries of creative expression. To date it has showcased more than 500 artists from around the world.

Posted by Carole Funger