Synesthesia  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision as of 21:53, 26 February 2013
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

← Previous diff
Revision as of 21:53, 26 February 2013
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

Next diff →
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Template}} {{Template}}
:[[Synesthesia in art]] :[[Synesthesia in art]]
-# A [[physiological]] or [[psychological]] [[phenomenon]] whereby a particular [[sensory]] [[stimulus]] triggers a second kind of [[sensation]]. For example, reading the letter 'r' may trigger the visual sensation of the colour purple in the mind or the eye of the [[synaesthete]] ([[grapheme]] → colour synaesthesia); or, more rarely, for example, the [[phoneme]] /l/ may [[elicit]] the taste of [[mince]] ([[lexical]] → [[gustatory]] synaesthesia).+ 
-# A literary device whereby one kind of sensation is described in the terms of another. (''Then these melodies turn to ice as real night music takes over, pianos and vibes erecting clusters in the high brittle octaves and a clarinet wandering across like a crack on a pond. Saxes doing the same figure eight over and over again.'' —John Updike, ''[[Rabbit, Run]]'')+
'''Synesthesia''' (also spelled '''synæsthesia''' or '''synaesthesia''', plural '''synesthesiae''' or '''synaesthesiae''')—from the Ancient Greek (syn), meaning "with," and (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. While cross-sensory [[metaphor]]s (e.g., "[[loud]] shirt", "[[bitter]] wind" or "[[prickly]] laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary. '''Synesthesia''' (also spelled '''synæsthesia''' or '''synaesthesia''', plural '''synesthesiae''' or '''synaesthesiae''')—from the Ancient Greek (syn), meaning "with," and (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. While cross-sensory [[metaphor]]s (e.g., "[[loud]] shirt", "[[bitter]] wind" or "[[prickly]] laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary.

Revision as of 21:53, 26 February 2013

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Synesthesia in art

Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—from the Ancient Greek (syn), meaning "with," and (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. While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., "loud shirt", "bitter wind" or "prickly laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary.

Overview

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).

It is estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants. Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. Synesthesia is also sometimes reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, or as a consequence of blindness or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from such non-genetic events is referred to as adventitious synesthesia to distinguish it from the more common congenital forms of synesthesia. Adventitious synesthesia involving drugs or stroke (but not blindness or deafness) apparently only involves sensory linkings such as sound → vision or touch → hearing; there are few if any reported cases involving culture-based, learned sets such as graphemes, lexemes, days of the week, or months of the year.

Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern researchers. Psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences, while functional neuroimaging studies have identified differences in patterns of brain activation.

Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia. Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent interest, but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes that occur in synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike.


People with synesthesia

There is a great deal of debate about whether or not synesthesia can be identified through historical sources. A small number of famous people have been labeled as synesthetes on the basis of at least two historical sources. This includes individuals of many different talents, such as artists, novelists, composers, musicians, and scientists.

Artists with synesthesia include the painter David Hockney, who perceives music synesthetically as colors, and who used these synesthetic colors when painting stage sets, but not in creating his other artworks. Also, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky had the same type of synesthesia (sound and color). Perhaps the most famous synesthete author was Vladimir Nabokov, who had grapheme → color synesthesia, one of the most common types, which he described at length in his autobiography, Speak Memory, and which he sometimes portrays in giving his characters synesthesia. 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. Notable synesthete scientists include Richard Feynman. Feynman describes in his autobiography, What Do You Care What Other People Think?, that he had the grapheme → color type. Other notable synesthetes include musician John Mayer; actress Stephanie Carswell; and electronic musician Aphex Twin, who borrows inspiration from lucid dreams as well as synesthesia (music → color). The classical pianist Hélène Grimaud has the condition also.

Some of the most frequently mentioned artists in connection with synesthesia probably were not synesthetes. Despite compositions such as Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and Mysterium, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was most likely not a synesthete. He was particularly interested in the psychological effects on the audience when they experienced sound and color simultaneously. His theory was that when the correct color was perceived with the correct sound, ‘a powerful psychological resonator for the listener’ would be created. On the score of Prometheus Scriabin wrote next to the instruments separate parts for the color organ (Galeyev 2001, Gleich 1963).

The French Romantic poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire wrote poems which focused on synesthetic experience, but were evidently not synesthetes themselves. Baudelaire's Correspondances (1857) [1]) introduced the Romantic notion that the senses can and should intermingle. Kevin Dann argues that Baudelaire probably learned of synesthesia from reading medical textbooks that were available in his home. Rimbaud, following Baudelaire, wrote Voyelles (1871) ([2]) which was perhaps more important than Correspondances in popularizing synesthesia, although he later admitted ""J'inventais la couleur des voyelles!" [I invented the colors of the vowels!].

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Synesthesia" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools