Colored Hearing (The Study of Synesthesia and the Combination of the Senses Process)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Graduated Student of Visual Communications

2 Faculty member of Iran Azad University

Abstract

Synesthesia is a kind of neurological phenomenon in which the stimulus perceived through one of the senses automatically activates the perception in another sense. The common name for sound to sight Synesthesia is “colored hearing”, i.e. the activation of color, form and motion via sound. The purpose of this research is to recognize the role of sound in creating synesthetic experiences (of course, in ordinary people, and not in the neurological sense) and to answer the question that how the sound can create visual synesthetic experiences. On one hand, artistic Synesthesia cannot be considered some sort of metaphoric or symbolic language and it is likely to find its origins in the reality of human perception. So another question which will be examined is what properties are latent in perception process making it possible for us to experience synesthetic perception. Furthermore, the auditory stimulus might also possess some attributes which would make the coupling between auditory and visual perceptions possible. Therefore, the last question would be if there are any common properties between hearing and vision making their coupling possible. The present research is the outcome of desk research, documentary research and also credible scientific-research internet resources. Generally, to study synesthetic perceptions, three categories should be differentiated: genuine Synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon, found rarely among people. The next category is metaphoric Synesthesia, commonly used by artists by employing the idea of Synesthesia and bonding the senses creatively. Finally, the last category is cross-sensory perception which can be considered a kind of synesthetic experience (not in the neurological sense) found among most people to some extent. Perception is a multisensory process and this property not only makes the experience of synesthetic perceptions possible, but also provides the possibility of visual experience in the case of receiving an auditory stimulus by creating some subjective multi-sensory representation. In addition, vision and hearing also have some common intersensory attributes which makes the possibility of coupling them. Visual music is an appropriate field to study these attributes. Though the title “visual music” has many instances, the main elements common in all types include color, form and rhythm (motion). According to researchers, real synesthetes and ordinary people have a similar performance in recognizing the associations between visual color and tone color, visual form and timbre, and finally visual rhythm and musical rhythm in such a way that most of them associate the frequency of sound (low or high) to the brightness of color or relate timbre to the size and the overall form of abstract visual shapes. On the other hand, although it needs more effort and skill to associate visual rhythm to musical rhythm (on the basis of agogics and dynamics), making such associations is not far beyond one’s ability. So as Synesthesia and combination of the senses is the main characteristic of human kind in general, a work of art even without any obvious synesthetic properties can evoke cross-sensory perceptions in the audience.

Keywords

References

 

Abbado, A (1988), Perceptual correspondences of abstract animation and synthetic sound, MIT Masters Thesis.
Baron-Cohen, S (1994), Synaesthesia: an account of colored hearing, Leonardo, 27 (4), pp.343-346.
Brown, R (2014), Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenominology Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience, Springer, Netherlands.
Calvert, G; Spence, C & Stein, B. E (2004), The Handbook of Multisensory Processes, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Cavallaro, D (2013), Synesthesia and the arts, McFarland & Company, USA.
Collopy, F (2000), Color, Form, and Motion: Dimensions of a Musical Art of Light, Leonardo, 33(5), pp.355-360.
Collopy, F (2009), Playing (with) Color, Glimpse, Vol. 2, Issue 3, pp.62-67.
Collopy, F; Fuhrer, R. M & Jameson, D (1999), Visual Music in a Visual Programming Language, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Tokyo, Japan, pp.111-118.
Cytowic, R. E (2002), Synaesthesia: a union of the senses, 2nd edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Cytowic, R. E & Eagleman, M (2009), Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of synesthesia, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Daniels, D (2004), sound & vision in avantgarde & mainstream, www.medienkunstnetz.de/theme/image-sound_relations/sound_vision/     2016-03-18.
Deutsch, P.G (2012), Synaesthesia and synergy in art, Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2 in C minor” as an example of interactive music visualization, Sensory Perception: Mind and Matter, F. G. Barth; P. G. Deutsch; & H. D. Klien (eds.), Springer-Verlag, Wien.
Fichner-Rathus, L (2011), Foundations of Art and Design, Wadsworth Publishing, USA.
Halliday, S (2013), Sound Modernity, Edinburg University Press, UK.
Haverkamp, M (2009), Look at that sound! Visual aspects of auditory perception, Proceeding of the third international Congress “synesthesia: Science and Art”, Granada, Spain.
Haverkamp, M (2010), Visualizing auditory perception: correlations, concepts, synesthesia, Proceedings of Galeyev Readings, Prometheus-Center, Kazan, Russia, October 2-5.
Haverkamp, M (2013), Synesthetic design: Handbook for a Multi-sensory Approach, Birkhauser, Germany.
Kandinsky, W (2001 [1911]), Concerning the Spiritual in Art, A. Glew (ed), MFA Publications, Tate Publishing, London  & New York.
Keefer, C (2015), Visual music’s influence on contemporary abstraction, Abstract Video, Gabrielle Jennings (ed.), University of California Press.
Lauer, D. A & Pentak, S (2011), Design Basics, 8th edition, Wadsworth Publishing, USA.
Marinetti, F. T & Fillia, L. E. C (1930), Manifesto della cucina futurista, Gazzetta del Popolo, Torino, December 28th.
McCabe, M. L (2010), Color and sound: Synaesthesia at the crossroads of music and science, Dissertation, University of Florida.
Prampolini, E (1913), Gazzetta Ferrarese, Ferrara, Italy, August 26th.
Ramachandran, V. S & Hubbard, E. M (2001), Psychophysical investigations into the neural basis of synaesthesia, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B., 268, pp.979-983.
Repp, B. H (1992), Music as motion: a Synopsis of Alexander Truslit’s (1938) Gestaltung und Bewegung in der Musik, Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Research, SR_ 111/112, pp.266-269.
Rogowska, A. M (2015), Synesthesia and Individual Differences, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Simner, J (2006), Beyond perception: synaesthesia as a psycholinguistic phenomenon, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(1), pp.23-29.
 
Journal of Fine Arts: Visual Arts
Volume 23, Issue 3
September 2018
Pages 5-12

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics