by Esma Kurbegovic -

How Everyone is Capable of Making Synaesthetic Correlations

Synaesthesia has already been thoroughly described in my previous articles pertaining to my ProWorks Research. But today I want to present something fun and engaging in hopes that I will provoke you to explore your mind more.

Believe it or not, even people who have no synaesthetic tendencies often still subconsciously make multi-sensory correlations. Plainly put, perhaps we can say synesthesia has a big spectrum of intensity, and a lot of it is learned and acquired throughout our lives, through conditioning and cultural norms.

After going through this article, even if you feel like you still don’t relate to the examples shown, it is important to note that synaesthesia can be to some extent induced by meditation, practising and training oneself. Before reviewing the examples listed below, you should perform the synaesthesia test on the following link. Even though this type of test is a scientific method, the website discourages its users from self-diagnosing. This is because even if you test well or not, this test does not cover all types of synaesthesia. You might have some other form that is not being tested by this quiz.

If you performed the test, you should have your suggested result and now you can proceed to check these examples. There is something called the Kiki-Bouba effect, which describes a form of ideasthesia- where we assign names and miraculously even personality traits to shapes. Below are 2 different shapes- if you assign them the correct one, you successfully relate to ideasthesia. So, which one is Kiki and which one is Bouba:

The correct answer is Bouba and Kiki respectively. Here is another one, just to drive the point home. Which one is Takete and which is Maluma:

Correct: Takete and Malouma respectively. What if I told you that 80% of people can correctly assign all these shapes a personality trait as well? The word Kiki is usually associated with the following words: happy, clever, small, tall, thin, young, unpleasant, nervous and upper class. This test also demonstrates the fat-thin effect (with most people stating Kiki is thin). This might be coming from a slew of popular Characters, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Asterix and Obelix, etc. 

by Esma Kurbegovic -

History of Synaesthesia in the Audiovisual Sphere

Synaesthesia is one of the phenomenons that was always quite interesting to artists, however, still never explored as much as it should be. During my research, I was quite intrigued to find out that even Plato had referred to synaesthesia in his writing. In 370 BC, he wrote Timaeus, which connects the world’s essence with musical ratios. After that, Aristotle compared the harmony of sounds with the harmony colours. After the chromatic scale was introduced, and in 1492 Franchino Gaffurino proposed a colour system for the scales, where Dorian was crystalline, Phyrgian orange, Lydian red and the Mixolydian was an undefined mixed colour. In 1646 Athanasius Krcher developed a color system for musical interval based on symbolism. 

Sir Isaac Newton also delved into the relationship between music and colour. In his work Optics, he revisited and expanded upon Aristotle’s relationships between sound and colour. He mathematically divided visible light into seven different colours, which had similar mathematical relationships to a musical scale. Even though Newton didn’t hold to these claims as scientific truth, rather just analogies, Louis Bertrand Castel firmly believed that the connection between light and the musical scale is a fact. He drafted a sketch prototype for a “clavecin oculaire”, an instrument that would produce the “correct” colour with each note played. 

In 1875, the first colour organ was built by the American inventor Bainbridge Bishop.  The organ worked by projecting coloured light onto a screen while it is being played. Unfortunately all 3 of Bishop’s organs were lost in a fire.

Vincent Van Gogh is quite a notable artist with synaesthetic abilities. His letter to his brother often mention synaesthetic experiences, which confirm this claim. In those letters he mentions that certain colours, like yellow and blue were like fireworks to his senses. Van Gogh probably had chromesthesia and basically painted sounds the way he saw them. Yellow gave him an experience of joy- a song of hope that he was otherwise missing in his life.

Synaesthesia was a big subject of interest for certain Bauhaus artists as well, most notably Gertrud Grunow, who was a Bauhaus master and teacher since 1919. She was interested in incorporating movement and music into visual art, which in her words opened “new originals ways of experiencing”. She put a focus on instinctive and emotional expression. Gertrud started making a new style of curriculum, but sadly died before being able to finish. Today, it is hard to establish what her thoughts were in the curriculum, as it was finished by her assistant, and he was very good at mimicking her writing style. Grunow influenced the interest in Synaesthesia in Gropius, Kandinsky and Itten.

Kandinsky’s works were all named as if they were musical compositions. He called them “Symphony of Colours”. Just like Van Gogh, he found yellow to be particularly important to him. He created experimental performance-based expressions of Synaesthesia for theatre titled “The Yellow Sound”.

Today, there are more and more synaesthetic works done with modern techniques like VR, 3D animation and similar. Even though interest in this field is very steady, synaesthetic audiovisual experiences are not part of the mainstream media yet. Personally, I consider that this field needs a lot more attention and research, as it is still not entirely understood.

by Esma Kurbegovic -

The Synaesthetic Experience of Music

Music is a big part of almost everyone’s life. We all listen to at least one song a day. So, why do we choose specific songs over others and add them to our playlists? Of course, it mostly has to do with personal taste, which is shaped by our life experience, culture and what we emotionally resonate with. 

When we listen to music, we often generate multi-sensory experiences that come from the stimulation of our creativity. Most often, people yearn for a visual output for music, hence why we created visual shows. Good visuals make music even more gripping and stimulating to the senses.

So, what role does synaesthesia play in the perception of music? In its self, it’s an interesting concept, but once put into practice, it makes music much more attractive for listeners.

 

Synaestietic musicians see notes as colors or vice-versa. Chords can also each have their own specific colour.

Many famous musicians say that they have a form of synaesthesia, which makes a lot of sense. Synaesthetes build their art around their multi-sensory experience and thus make music a bit more unique.

An example of how synaesthetic music is different is when an artists “hears” colour and integrates this experience into their work. The synaesthetic experience is slightly different for each person, which leads to different musicians producing different interpretations of their conditions. Someone might see music in colour, like Mary J Blige, and someone, like Billie Eilish, might first start making music and then connect it to colour.

Why does music produced by synaesthetes have a competitive edge? Jamie Ward (cognitive neuroscience, University of Sussex) explains that synaesthetic music can have an impact on the listening choice in non-synaesthetes. He has observed how people always seem to prefer a synaesthete’s work over a non-synaesthete. Most people simply find their work “more aesthetic”. The following video gives more details about this phenomenon.

Resources:

Gordon, Eden Arielle Gordon Arielle. “15 Iconic Musicians with Synesthesia.” Popdust, 6 Jan. 2020, www.popdust.com/15-iconic-musicians-with-synesthesia-2643790427.html.