“If you pass the light from a sodium flash through a prism, you get a pattern very different from the familiar continuous rainbow that Newton elicited from natural sunlight. Instead of a continuous pattern, in which all gradations of pure color are apparently represented, the sodium flash generates a series of lines of light. …in the musical analogy, sodium produces a chord where sunlight produced all possible tones—"white noise."”

Other elements produce other chords.
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

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Frank Wilczek49

physicist 1951

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“So let us listen to the light—what music do we hear? For one thing, we can elicit from each chemical element its own, unique chord. You may sometimes have noticed that a bright yellow flash is produced if ordinary table salt is sprinkled on a flame…a first bare hint of the subject of flame spectra… The fact that different elements emit light with different color characteristics is exploited by the makers of fireworks.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

“Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Terms' p. 74
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“To the far left, above your shoulder’s gentle/curve, like golden pods, the sodium vapour/lights in the naval dockyard … And before us,/a continuous, unreal flare of fire defined/the horizon’s extremity, a stain on a brow.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

The Steamer
St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

“This evolution toward noise-sound is only possible today. The ear of an eighteenth century man never could have withstood the discordant intensity of some of the chords produced by our orchestras (whose performers are three times as numerous); on the other hand our ears rejoice in it, for they are attuned to modern life, rich in all sorts of noises. But our ears far from being satisfied, keep asking for bigger acoustic sensations. However, musical sound is too restricted in the variety and the quality of its tones. Music marks time in this small circle and vainly tries to create a new variety of tones... We must break at all cost from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 6

“Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich.”

Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, the first human in space

Statement of April 1961, as quoted in Warrior of Light : The Life of Nicholas Roerich : Artist, Himalayan explorer and visionary (2002) by Colleen Messina, p. 46

“Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); SILENCE 3-4
1930s

“He walked down the side street to a wide thoroughfare of shop-windows and offices. This, he assumed, was one of the main arteries of London, a city he did not know very well. There were sodium street-lights, lights in windows. Occasional cars sped by. There was even an airline bus crammed with yawning passengers. Edwin saw himself reflected in a window full of tape-recorders.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

“Graphic work as the expressive movement of the hand holding the recording pencil.... is so fundamentally different from dealing with tone and color that one can use this technique quite well in the dark, even in the blackest night. On the other hand, tone (movement from light to dark) presupposes some light, and color presupposes a great deal of light.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1912), # 928, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1911 - 1914

“Neo-Impressionist method is an attempt is made to achieve the richness of the sunlight spectrum with all its tones. An orange that blends with yellow and red, a violet that tends toward red and blue, a green between blue and yellow are, with white the sole elements. Through mixture (in the eye of the observer) of these pure colours, whose relationship can be varied at will, from the most brilliant to the greyish. Every brush stroke that is taken from the palette remains pure on the canvas.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

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Frank Wilczek49

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