Seeing Sound In A World of Color

Although the term of Synesthesia is new to me, the concept is not. I have encountered the idea in books, magazines, and the lyrics of music such as the introduction to Everything Comes From You by Peter Gabriel's project, Big Blue Ball. The accounts of better memory recall by those who have Synesthesia is unsurprising. Indeed, I remember reading about studies conducted on people without Synesthesia related to memory recall. For instance, if students studied while chewing their favorite flavor gum, wearing perfume,or listening to music, all those things could help with memory recall during a test. In my experiences, these studies are correct. While preparing for an exam last semester, I listened to my favorite Sanskrit chants. There was information on the exam I could not remember, even with attempting to draw diagrams and think of notes. But when I began to think of the music in myhead, the answers came almost instantly.

When reading about sounds appearing as color to some with Synesthesia, it made me think about a concept album by The Dear Hunter. On this album are eleven songs, each which are supposed to represent and invoke the feeling of a color. The song Things That Hide Away is green. While Filth and Squalor is black, and What Time Taught Us is indigo. If you are interested in hearing further about the concept behind the album The Color Spectrum, I highly recommend reading the interview by Guitar World with Casey Crescenzo. The interviewer even asks him specifically about the phenomenon of Synesthesia.

In other forms of art, I have seen a representation of Synesthesia at the Smithsonian's rotating exhibit in Washington D.C. On a series of screens, different colors and abstract shapes would appear each time a note was struck or a chord played on the piano. Although I do not recall the artist, this is the most blatant form of Synesthesia I have encountered in art.

The other encounter I remember as a child was with Cymatics. We made art with Crayola paints and paper placed on a platform (I do not remember the material it was made out of as I was quite young), and simple songs were played as a series of tones. We used different color paints and created very beautiful shapes. I remember being amazed that I could see music! Little did I ever think our arts and crafts experiment was actually a field of scientific study!

Overall I found the concepts of Synesthesia and Cymatics quite fascinating. Now that I am more aware of them, I wonder just how much more in the world I will notice that has been influenced by Synesthesia and Cymatics.