Umut Eldem took part in several interdisciplinary projects as part of his composition studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. The most notable are the Word-Composition, Dance-Composition, and Sketch the Sound. For these projects the Composition Department collaborated with the Word Department, Dance Department and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Eldem participated in the Kolla Festival and the Antropical project in Luxembourg as an artist-in-residence, giving lectures on sound-colour associations in art and creating the installation Chrom, presented in the Mirador Forest throughout the festival.
With his Post-Graduate thesis, Foundations of cross-modal analytic thinking, he established the key terms and concepts for his research Synaesthesia and sound-colour associations as an interdisciplinary metaphor. The physical and psychological features of synaesthesia, the link between synaesthesia and general cross-modal (between the senses) associations, and a look at history of cross-modal associations in music are central in his research.