Nadezhda Kargapolova
Independent researcher, Moscow, Russia
Based on a student design bureau of the Aviation Institute and directed by professor Bulat Machmudovich Galeyev, the Institute for experimental aesthetics “Prometheus” in Kazan was probably the only center in the USSR and post-soviet Russia that was simultaneously engaged into theory, history and practice of “visual music”.
The center developed and created some new “light-musical” devices, arranged scientific work on studying a phenomenon of synesthesia and “color hearing”, and collected all available information on history and new achievements from all over the world. Unique scientific seminars, conferences and festivals “Light and Music” were held here. Kazan events gathered researchers from many countries. An interdisciplinary direction of the scientific problematics united specialists in many different fields. One of the main research activities of Kazan school was the study of synaesthetic experiments of followers of Scriabin’s light-music ideas in Russian art of the 20th century.