Synesthesia 'I can see sounds'

Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), meaning "with," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), meaning "sensation"'—is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise).

 

 

 

 

 

Composers include Duke Ellington (timbre → color), Franz Liszt (music → color), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Olivier Messiaen, who had a complex form of synesthesia in which chord structures produced synesthetic colors. Synesthesia has been a source of inspiration for artists (e.g. Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Mondrian), composers (e.g. Scriabin, Messiaen, Ligeti), poets and novelists (e.g. Baudelaire, Nabokov) and contemporary digital artists. Kandinsky and Mondrian experimented with image-music correspondences in their paintings. Scriabin composed symphonic poems of sound and color. Messiaen captured the colors of landscapes in music.

 

In sound → color synesthesia, individuals experience colors in response to tones or other aspects of sounds. Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues break this type of synesthesia into two categories, which they call "narrow band" and "broad band" sound → color synesthesia. In narrow band sound → color synesthesia (often called music → color synesthesia), musical stimuli (e.g., timbre or key) will elicit specific color experiences, such that a particular note will always elicit red, or harps will always elicit the experience of seeing a golden color. In broadband sound → color synesthesia, on the other hand, a variety of environmental sounds, like an alarm clock or a door closing, may also elicit visual experiences.

 

Color changes in response to different aspects of sound stimuli may involve more than just the hue of the color. Any dimension of color experience (see HSL color space) can vary. Brightness (the amount of white in a color; as brightness is removed from red, for example, it fades into a brown and finally to black), saturation (the intensity of the color; fire engine red and medium blue are highly saturated, while grays, white, and black are all unsaturated), and hue may all be affected to varying degrees (Campen & Froger 2003). Additionally, music → color synesthetes, unlike grapheme → color synesthetes, often report that the colors move, or stream into and out of their field of view.

Like grapheme → color synesthesia, there is rarely agreement amongst music → color synesthetes that a given tone will be a certain color. However, when larger samples are studied, consistent trends can be found, such that higher pitched notes are experienced as being more brightly colored (Ward, Huckstep & Tsakanikos 2006). The presence of similar patterns of pitch-brightness matching in non-synesthetic subjects suggests that this form of synesthesia shares mechanisms with non-synesthetes (Ward, Huckstep & Tsakanikos 2006).

'I can see sounds'

For Jane Mackay, sneezes are turquoise and Friday is chequered. She has synaesthesia, a neurological condition which mixes up her senses. Here, the former GP-turned-artist, of south London, explains her colourful world.

Sounds, words and numbers just throw images into my head. 'Jane', for instance, is quite orangey-red with a yellowish tinge on the 'e' at the end.

Synaesthetes

Affects up to one in 2,000 people Runs in families, particularly women Some see sound, feel tastes, or hear movement Painters David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky had synaesthesia As did author Vladimir Nabokov

Asking when did I realise that I'm synaesthetic is like saying, 'When did you realise that you weren't colour-blind?'

It takes a very long time to realise that others may not experience it like you do. Some people think I'm making it up.

One of my earliest memories is that I could tell the difference between Canadian and American accents because the Canadian accent is more yellow.

And my sister and I used to argue about our colours for the days of the week - my Wednesday is a lemony-yellow with angles in the middle of it, hers is green.

It's really hard to explain where I see the colours. It's almost like I see what's in front of me with a colour filter in front of it - but what I'm looking at in the physical world doesn't change colour.

Brian Perkins: Colours of his name and voice clash

I can find it very hard to remember names if the colour is at odds with some defining characteristic of the person.

Brian Perkins, the BBC Radio Four newsreader, has an amazingly rich, chocolatey-brown voice.

Yet 'Perkins' is a rather wishy-washy yellow-green, so I always forget his surname.

Art for art's sake

I've always loved painting, and have done it all my life. But I also love the sciences, so I was a GP for 20 years. It took five years to decide to give up medicine.

On New Year's Day last year, I threw my stethoscope in the Thames to mark the beginning of my career as a full-time artist.

Postcards of artworks inspired by synaesthetic principles

I paint largely, but not exclusively, orchestral music - sometimes I transfer my synaesthetic images completely to the paper, sometimes I use them as a starting point."

But what really sparks me off is change and contrast.

My printer, for instance, started jamming recently and the sound turned pink, quite an opaque pastel pink. I hadn't been aware of any particular colour for the printer because the sound is so routine, but the change got to me.

It's the same with music. Modern music; music I haven't heard before; someone hitting a wrong note; noises-off - I get tremendously strong synaesthetic experiences from all of those.

I had a wonderful sneeze once, from someone sitting behind me in a concert. It was a really lovely turquoise that came across my shoulder in a triangular sheet.

See the music

This academic year, I'm the artist-in-residence for the Cambridge University Musical Society.

Sketches of the first, top, and second rehearsals of a piece by Woolfenden

I sit in on all their rehearsals, trying to capture the synaesthetic images I get from the music in a very sketchy, annotated form.

I tape the rehearsals, so I can go back over the images. From these sketches and tapes, I work up paintings in my studio.

People often ask me if I get the same images each time I hear something, and the answer is yes.

But you can hear music live, or on CD, or in a sectional rehearsal, and that can change the colour and shape of it all together.

I think most people must be at least a little bit synaesthetic.

After all, our whole language is littered with synaesthetic images - we're always talking about warm sounds, sharp colours.

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