30 PEOPLE
the the color of
HALEY PLANT, feature writer layout, ETHAN MULLEN
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nly two years ago, North Carolina-born Siana Altiise Digitz was sleeping on couches and working as an English teacher in Shenzhen, China. At night, she was an underground musician, equipped with a group of friends and a passion for music. Black Panda, a band she created that Digitz now describes as “terrible” is where she began her journey of making and performing music. Around the same time, her journey with visual art also began. Altiise admitted that she did not even create art seriously until three months before her first art show. “I just started creating pieces that to me looked like an anxiety attack or depression or joy. People are afraid of things they don’t understand, but once you put a face on something, it’s not so scary anymore.” Altiise said. Altiise’s first show was well received, and she continues to create similar personal pieces to this day. She traveled from Shenzhen to South Africa, where she pursued her art and music further. From there, she moved back to Atlanta and then, on a whim, moved to Germany. Although the trip came about from a last-minute decision, her journey to Germany ended up changing her life, and she lived there for three months. She met her husband, Alex, who then moved to Atlanta to be with her. Altiise isn’t your typical creative mind. She doesn’t just listen to her music; she sees her songs in bursts of color before her eyes. Siana has synesthesia: a condition in which one of her senses is experienced along with another sense. In Altiise’s case, she experiences expressions of color when she hears sound and music. The two to her are inseparable. “My synesthesia doesn’t just help my music; it is my music. I’ve never experienced it any other way. For me, music is color and sound” Altiise said. As a little girl, Altiise played the saxophone and her synesthesia affected how she learned music. “I followed the music on the sheet of paper,” Altiise reminisced. “I remembered the audio rhythm, and I assigned that to what I saw.” She described her own saxophone sound as a bright yellow, to her displeasure. “I always wanted my sound to be a deep gold, but it never got there.” This association with colors differentiating pleasant and unpleasant sounds is an everyday occurrence for Altiise. She can tell her pitch by what her voice looks like and it is the same when listening to other artists. “It takes me three to five seconds to tell if I like a song. My colors help a lot.” Altiise remembers not being able to learn how to read music on a sheet because of the way her vision would become a distraction. “It was too much” she recalls. Now, creating music on her own, she doesn’t have to rely on sheet music to bring her vision to life. Altiise’s creative process is quite unique to her, and not just because of her ability to combine auditory and visual factors. “I approach a song like it is already finished. It’s just waiting for me to bring it to life”, Altiise says. When writing music, she has to sit in silence because of her desire not to be distracted or influenced by others’ music. Although it can be a hard concept to grasp, Altiise tries to explain it the best she can. “Everything has a sound. I’ve taken my husband’s German intonations, I’ve taken patterns of his voice and turned into a song, or more like I hear it as a song.” She even uses her cat’s meows to create melodies. “Something as simple as my cat asking for food can easily turn into a song” Altiise says. When she moved to Atlanta, Altise found that the music scene was a lot different than the small bars she was used to in Shenzhen, so she began to build her own company. With a title still in the works, Altiise is currently growing her name all across the Atlanta area for combining visual technology with music.
Vivacious Atlanta artist tells her captivating journey through music, art, and synesthesia