Autistic Cello Prodigy Paints Music: The ‘Picture Scores’ That Inspired Park Chan-wook
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
Lee Jung-hyun, an 18-year-old autistic cello prodigy from Chungbuk Arts High School, is exhibiting her ‘picture scores’—visual translations of music created by connecting colorful dots and images. Diagnosed with autism at 27 months, she showed absolute pitch and later joined an orchestra for neurodiverse youths. Her synesthesia (coloured hearing) lets her associate tones with colors and symbols; low to high notes shift from blue to red and melodies add concrete images for songs or abstract dot-patterns for classical pieces. Director Park Chan-wook used Lee as the real-life model for the daughter in his film (Ajeolhasuga Eopda/The Intermission), incorporating her artwork into the film’s visuals. Lee performs live at her exhibition in Cheongju and will appear with her father to explain the ‘picture scores’ at a roundtable in Seoul on Jan 21.
