Synesthesia in Life & Art

Synesthesia is when a sense is stimulated by another sense. Many musicians today have synesthesia, in which they perceive music as having colors. I had previously heard of this ability since a musician I liked a few years ago was able to see her music as colors when she played, so I was familiar with the concept. I read an article about it recently that states about only 4% of the population is able to do this, yet it seems so common among musicians and artists. Some famous names that had synesthesia are Franz Liszt, Duke Ellington, Vincent van Gogh and Marilyn Monroe. Another kind of synesthesia I wasn’t familiar with was of the grapheme-color variety, wherein numbers, days, months, letters and words have distinct shades of color. Grampheme-color synesthesia is the most common; some people even have tastes and textures with colors for specific words. An example of this would be some people only being able to see the letter L as blue or Wednesday as dark green, as noted in the article posted below. Many artists of different variety find that synesthesia helps them with their artist endeavors. For example, the musician Pharrell’s song, “Happy” was written in shades of yellow that have hints of orange. Recently, artists have tried to recreate the sense of color attributed to sound for others who don’t have synesthesia. A British composed named Nick Ryan worked with artists Quayola and Sinigaglia to show an audio-visual collaboration at Imogen Heap’s Reverb festival. The people in the audience would watch the screen, seeing how color and music correspond in a multi-sensory experience. 

Source: 

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140904-i-see-songs-in-colour