Comments | eugenesbucket: do you see colours when you hear sounds?

eugenesbucket

do you see colours when you hear sounds?

May 17, 2007 09:58

is anyone a synaesthetic?

synaesthesia is a condition which links hearing and seeing a colour through neurone signals in the brain. Basically if you have this condition you see colours when you hear sounds. Normally when the sound is at perfect pitch there should be only one colour. Don't ask me how you 'see' these colours, i don't know, i imagine ( Read more... )

Comments 5

platonical May 17 2007, 11:08:30 UTC

In the music department at UQ, there's a painting called 'Soundscape in A Major' which was painted by a piano teacher who possibly did her phd in synaesthesia. Its a very exciting painting. But not really how I imagine A major.

Maybe check out some of Messiaen's music. He was synaesthesic. And cool.

eugenesbucket May 18 2007, 23:41:50 UTC

hey lea! yeh i also heard kandinsky was a synaesthesic.. and his paintings are pretty crazy and colourful. Wow, to see A minor in a painting is pretty crazy..how would you paint it?

felanguicle May 22 2007, 01:12:08 UTC

I watched a really interesting doco a few months back on SBS about synaesthesia. They were interviewing all of these people with different forms of the condition, and there were some really fascinating examples. One guy could 'see' a linear progression of time (complicated I know, but he explained it pretty well), another woman would associate sound & vision with certain colours, and another guy associated different tastes with names of different places. The doco also talked about some famous musicians & artists who were synaesthetics. Really interesting stuff

eugenesbucket May 22 2007, 11:47:44 UTC

yeh, it's fascinating how the brain can connect senses which we understand to be independent of one another and create this new synthasised sense.
I was chatting to a girl who does spanish with me, she also studies music and math and was telling me about her favourite pianist, Yundi Lin. Apparently he's a chinese 'wunderkind' who took out a prestigious music prize in 2000 first time they had awarded anyone with it in 15 years. Anyway, she was telling me about how he is able to give notes their own colours so that what sounds like a melodie with an underlying harmony is actually a whole bunch of chords to which he has just added extra emphasis on particular notes..hence creating this distinct melody. haha sorry for confusing u! opens you up to a musicians perception of this colourful musical world...really quite beautiful.

felanguicle May 27 2007, 13:32:56 UTC

Aye, that's really cool. They do say that there were quite a few famous musicians/artists throughout history who had synaesthesia. In that doco I was telling you about they finished off by asking the subjects if it were possible, whether they would get rid of their synaesthesia. All of them said they wouldn't give it awaybecause they really enjoy it, but one guy (the one who associated tastes with names of places) said that the condition really sort of scared him sometimes. Sorta weird. Still, I think it'd be something really cool to experience. The closest thing I have is that when I'm doing/thinking of specific tasks, I subconsciously associate them with a mental picture of a distinct place. It's only ever that one place I associate the task with, and when I've thought about why, sometimes I realise it's because far back somewhere, there's a very slight connection between the place which I think about in my mind and the task. Even if it's just that I was talking to someone about that task when I was in that place. Hmmm...yeah, didn' ( ... )