Sonic Luminance, 2026/5/1

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Sonic Luminance was first shown on May 1, 2026. It’s an installation based on 34 participants. The structural and perceptual foundation of Sonic Luminance is informed by a perceptual study conducted with 34 participants, which explored the cross-modal relationships between timbre, lighting brightness, and color saturation. The findings informed both the compositional structure and the spatial design of the work. The music piece is mixed for a 7.1.4 immersive playback system, and the current version has a duration of 9 minutes and 27 seconds. It invites audiences to explore space through sound, using an electronically synthesized composition to imagine themselves inhabiting different environments shaped by the sonic landscape. Beyond static listening, the piece functions as a psychological catalyst, investigating how distinct auditory characteristics can evoke different emotional and embodied responses within a space.

The Experiment.

The installation space and the audience.

Small music venues usually have limited budgets for lighting, yet lighting plays a crucial part in enhancing audience experience and immersion. While previous research has primally focused on the relationship between color and timbre in acoustic sound, this study investigates how timbre influences the perception of lighting brightness and saturation, specifically in computer synthesized sound.
Through a 12-trial perceptual experiment with 34 participants, who continuously adjusted the lighting brightness and saturation in response to synthesized timbre stimuli. The results revealed a statistically significant relationship between timbre and lighting brightness, but no significant relationship between timbre and lighting saturation.
Further analysis using linear mixed-effects models showed that brightness perception could be predicted by continuous acoustic features, with spectral centroid and spectral entropy emerging as significant predictors. Entropy exhibited a slightly stronger effect, suggesting that both the distribution and complexity of spectral energy contribute to perceived brightness.
These findings later informed the creation of an immersive sound and lighting installation based on these perceptual links. The brightness of the lighting is continuously adjusted in response to changes in timbre based on the data collected from participants. The results provide a perceptually grounded approach to designing interactive lighting systems, particularly for small or low-budget performance environments.

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