For the Wild-Hearted Souls

Synesthesia art for “B.Y.O.B.” by System of a Down. 

As a synesthete, this is what music “looks” like, except that here, it’s presented in a 2-dimensional space and isn’t moving; In my head, the shapes and patterns twist, vibrate, accelerate, pulse, and swirl as the music plays. The result is hypnotic and mystifying.

musicproblems:

submitted by: spinningincircles95

My brain does this automatically - it’s called Synesthesia. 

alchymista:

Infants Possess Intermingled Senses

What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another.

The work, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, has become the first experimental confir­mation of the infant-synesthesia hy­pothesis—which has existed, unproved, for almost 20 years.

Researchers presented infants and adults with images of repeating shapes (either circles or triangles) on a split-color background: one side was red or blue, and the other side was yellow or green. If the infants had shape-color asso­ciations, the scientists hypoth­esized, the shapes would affect their color preferences. For in­stance, some infants might look significantly longer at a green back­ground with circles than at the same green background with triangles. Absent synesthesia, no such dif­ference would be visible.

The study confirmed this hunch. Infants who were two and three months old showed significant shape-color associations. By eight months the preference was no longer pronounced, and in adults it was gone altogether.

The more important implications of this work may lie beyond synesthesia, says lead author Katie Wagner, a psychologist at U.C.S.D. The finding provides insight into how babies learn about the world more generally. “In­fants may perceive the world in a way that’s fundamentally different from adults,” Wagner says. As we age, she adds, we narrow our focus, perhaps gaining an edge in cognitive speed as the sensory symphony quiets down.

Read about this study in “Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens” by P. Duffy when I first found out that I had synesthesia. Amazing to think that EVERYONE had synesthesia at some point. 

I tend to think that synesthesia actually affects more people than just one in 25,000. I’d say it’s more like 1 in every 200 or so. It’s just that many synesthetes don’t even realize they have the condition because seeing funky colors and tasting shapes is perfectly normal and no cause for concern. 

I learned that I had the condition because synesthesia came up in a discussion during physics class in high school. Otherwise, Id never have known about it. 

(Source: grantmarkwell)

Synesthesia: I see color for pain and certain kinds of pleasure. These are the colors I saw in reaction to a minor knife wound I experienced while removing teeth from a damaged roadkill bear skull. The knife slipped and went right into the pad of my thumb.

Bright red/yellow/orange was the initial penetration of the knife into my thumb. The purple, browns, and deeper reds and rusty oranges are the throbbing sensation which continued for a few days thereafter. 

I found the purple color in the throbbing to be most beautiful. 

I admit, I actually applied unnecessary pressure to the cut a few times in order to see it better. 

Wish the migraine I had last night looked more like this. But this was created by an inner ear infection that fucked up my equilibrium or something of that ilk. Last night’s migraine was a freak occurrence, and was bright orange and black. 

(Source: Flickr / littlelioness09)

Synesthesia: The color of the feeling I got when I learned that a friend had fallen victim to the cancer which had been destroying her body for over a year.

She was kind to me, and to others who believed the world was not suitable for them. Her sacrifices made life possible for those who may not have lived otherwise. 

I have Synesthesia.

All my life, I’ve seen color for numbers, letters, days of the week, peoples’ personalities, music, certain smells, and even orgasms. Yes, orgasms. But music is probably my favorite thing to paint, since the range of colors I see in music is practically endless. 

When I look at the number three, my brain tells me that I see a medium-dark shade of pure green. I do not like the color of three. It is always the same color. 

When I hear color in music, I generally see the same tones and movement, but there is more to it than there is for a number or letter. Kind of like when you watch a movie, and then watch it again a few weeks later, and notice things you didn’t notice the first time - I do that with the colors in song. 

Above is a painting of what I see while listening to the song “Goodbye Blue Sky” by Pink Floyd, commissioned by the very talented David Coalburn, a fellow artist who specializes in realism. I guess that, to a guy who paints images which look EXACTLY like photographs, art that appears more abstract is somewhat intriguing. I do not, however, consider my art abstract; it is something I actually perceive, not a representation of a perception. 

This is my reality. It’s what the inside of my head looks like all the time. But I’ve known it all my life, so to me, it’s not too strange at all. In fact, from my perspective, anyone who reads this and DOESN’T see colors jumping off the screen is a total freak. 

Yet I’m the test subject in this world, because the condition synesthesia is very rare. No one really knows too much about it, aside from the fact that most people effected by it are born with the condition, and many of them have more than one set of cross-wired senses. In all, I have about 13 different forms of Synesthesia, mostly having to do with seeing colors or personalities for unrelated items.