Synesthesia

[eXhale]

Several months ago, I saw something on TV (ARTE channel) on synesthesia. It was really amazing but I remembered about it only today, so I searched the ARTE website, found a lot more information and I wanted to share it here. :)

What is synesthesia? It's the "ability" to not only see colors, but to also feel and hear them. I write "ability" in quotes because apparently some think it's a disorder (?). It's indeed not "normal" for human beings to feel/hear colors. According to some statistics, between 1/25000 and 1/2000 of the population have this ability (that's a lot!!). It has something to do with the X chromosome, which is why (I believe, biology is not my thing) there are 3 times more women with this ability than men. For these people, colors are the most important in their everyday life. When they meet someone, they remember their color.

What I find really interesting as a VJ is the fact these people can translate music to color which is exactly what us VJs are supposed to do! We struggle to find good colors for the music and some people see them immediately, this is just not fair! ;) I wonder if the colors these people feel/hear are 100% personnal or if they all see the same colors. I guess there must be some common patterns... It would be interesting to know what feelings/music they translate to what color and if it matches with the standard color theory (I haven't had time to read a lot on the subject yet)

Does anyone here have synesthesia? On the ARTE site they say someone from Germany had created a software to show the colors that he felt/saw/heard for other people who did not have this ability. Maybe one of the VJCentral member? :p I have the feeling that A/V must be the perfect kind of art for these people.

Woah anyway this is really interest me, I think I'm going to write an article on VJCentral.com about it, unless someone with more knowledge than me on this subject want to write one. Check the links below for more information and let me know what you think of this :)


French documentation:
http://www.arte-tv.com/tracks/20011130/ftext/Tribal.htm
http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/teaching/UVLibre/9900/bin19/

German documentation:
http://www.arte-tv.com/tracks/20011130/dtext/Tribal.htm
http://www.synaesthesieweb.de/

English translation:
http://world.altavista.com/tr/?lp=fr_en&url=http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/teaching/UVLibre/9900/bin19/
http://world.altavista.com/tr/?lp=de_en&url=http://www.synaesthesieweb.de

[petewarden]

http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Psychology/Sensation_and_Perception/Synaesthesia/

is another good place to look for synaesthesia related info.

[robotfunk]

What I find really interesting as a VJ is the fact these people can translate music to color which is exactly what us VJs are supposed to do! We struggle to find good colors for the music and some people see them immediately, this is just not fair! I wonder if the colors these people feel/hear are 100% personnal or if they all see the same colors. I guess there must be some common patterns... It would be interesting to know what feelings/music they translate to what color and if it matches with the standard color theory (I haven't had time to read a lot on the subject yet)

inspired by the synaesthesia phenomenon I made a plugin in flowmotion that converts audio to color . FFT is used to read out bass/mid/high levels of incoming audio and you can map each freq band to R G or B channels. The effect is a bit like a color organ out of the 70s. I haven't done much research into what correspondance these people experience, just mapped the hearable audio spectrum to the visible spectrum. ( actually you can map it yourself). Another thing i've thought of is octaving up notes until their frequency hits the visual spectrum to find color 'overtones' of musical notes. Trouble is that only a small pitch interval spreads across the entire visible spectrum this way, so most notes are unrepresentable like this.

[MoRpH]

So why not scale the audible notes into the visable spectrum???

[Amukidi]

This is a tricky subject to rationalise - There seem to be two schools of thought on whether or not we all see exactly the same colour. I definitely err on the "no way" side! I cannot even begin to imagine that we all see the same, as emotional response is such a huge part of the experience. (its a bit like suggesting that we are ALL moved by Celine Dion singing the theme to Titanic!!). However, I have experienced this phenomenon, but only in moments of heightened visual awareness - that is, after or during extended sessions of painting or image-making. Smells become part of it too and I am quite jealous of those who have almost total access to this feeling. BUT - it is one of those subjects where science is simply inadequate to explain it, subjectivity is rampant and all we can do is discuss, share experiences and stare in awe at ti all!

[robotfunk]

So why not scale the audible notes into the visable spectrum???

this is what i ended up doing ... thing is i wanted a musically correct way of doing it ... if you take a c note and double the frequency you get another c etc etc .. if you keep doubling the base frequency at one point you enter the visible domain.
so this is how i would arrive at corresponding color ( light frequency ) of each possible tone.
unfortunately small differences grow exponentially if you multiply with 2 each time ... thats why not every note has a visual counterpart ( only 2 or 3 notes could be doubled into the visual spectrum , the rest were invisible to the human eye).

[Amukidi]

Why not try using colour chords??? Take Cmajor as the 3 colours furthest apart on the colour wheel, say red yellow and blue, and play around whith what you percieve to be minors, sevenths etc????

[LEVLHED]

I understand Stevie Wonder is one of the people who has this ability. Which is fortunate, since he is blind.



"very superstisous
writings on the wall"

[eXhale]

jaffa, I agree with you that it would be non-sense to imagine that people all "feel" the same colors... the human brain is way too complex for this. :nod: However, when you had those experiences, did the colors you felt/smellt/heard correspond to what you had expected? Especially since you know a lot about color theory?

[Amukidi]

The best way of describing it is a sense of balance and harmony, that things are "in the zone" as I believe sportsmen/women say. The smell thing is wierd tho - they are usually smells from my childhood - especially from my days at boarding school. This makes me think that there is some faily serious shit happening but controll of it is out of my hands, as I said, I wish it happened more often!! oh, and no, drugs don't work!!!!
BTW I am working hard on the theory stuff, but have a few, more pressing jobs to get out of the way, so be patient!

[wellREDman]

i read an interestin article in new scientist a while ago apparently ,explaining the mozart effect : someone ran the output of some kind of brain scan thru software to convert it into musical notes, and it came out sounding very baroque and mozart like, so this researcher reckons Mozart had a form of synesthesia where he could actually hear his own neurons firing!

[unjulation]

touching upon the ideas that i've discused before with referance to wellredmans coments it seams to be all about how our psyche interprits the brain, which, unfortunatly, seems to be prety subjective situation.
but yes defanetly worth looking into, wether you actualy manage to visualy interprit the direct brain activity, chemical and physicall, i dont know, but i'm sure the visuals you find through doing it would be interesting.

[JoshM]

ive experienced similar things when doing alot of visual work also. Like at one of the last parties we did, we were working with video feedback for most of the night making constant changes in the visual. When morning time came around i could see video feedback in the trees, sky and everything else. Kinda like when you stare too long at something and it affects everything else you see.

I'm also color blind, so perhaps im the bi polar opposite of synesthesia ;)

[wellREDman]

i dont think its color blindness, I always find that after some really intense mixing that my vision is slightly squiffy, especially if you go and lie down and close your eyes,

[InsideUsAll]

I often find patterns in my visuals stay in my visual perception of everything around me once I've finished a gig. Especially if I am very into what I'm doing. It's definately at its strongest when I close my eyes.

I don't ever see colours after the event though, just patterns. This is probably a common phenomenen though I guess.

I recently spoke to a guy who was studying cybernetics at reading university. For his final major project he was studying the relationship between touch and sight. With reference to the 'feeling colour' skill some people have. Quite interesting stuff. His findings could go on to help blind people see using a brail like multicoloured surface type thing. hmmm

[sleepytom]

Originally posted by InsideUsAll
I often find patterns in my visuals stay in my visual perception of everything around me once I've finished a gig. Especially if I am very into what I'm doing. It's definately at its strongest when I close my eyes.


Yep this is know as "vjs eye" its kinnda like tennis elbow and can be prevented by only using one eye at a time whilst vjing

as to only seeing patterns with no colour this is because your optic nerve has the chroma pin bent on its micro din plug (like an svideo plug but loads smaller) that goes into the back of your visual cortex. You can genrally sort it out by giving yourself a sharp smack on the side of the head (if this doesn't work try wrapping gaffa tape round your neck)

[eXhale]

Originally posted by sleepytom
Yep this is know as "vjs eye" its kinnda like tennis elbow and can be prevented by only using one eye at a time whilst vjing
are you serious????? :D :D :D

[LEVLHED]

heh, sounds good to me!

I've been experiencing this more now since I've been using the rebelle. You don't notice until you peel your eyeballs from the screen and look around.

[MoRpH]

Originally posted by *****
Give me a shout if you have anything you want tested on him.

I'm against animal testing, but I know a cosmetics company that might be interested......... does he look good in lipstick and eyeshadow :p

[syzygy]

If anyone wants to see a cool example of visuals that affect you after you look away, go to the following link and follow the instructions:

http://www.grand-illusions.com/pinwheel.htm

You only have to look at the moving patterns for about 30 seconds to get a pronounced effect.

SyZyGY