"Paintings really can be heard"

[reason.on]

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060...ynaesthesia.htm

Paintings really can be heard, scientist says

Sept. 7, 2006

Courtesy University College London

and World Science staff

The Rus­sian art­ist Was­si­ly Kan­din­sky was­n’t talk­ing non­sense when he claimed his paint­ings could be heard, a sci­ent­ist says. In fact, he adds, we all link sound and col­or men­tal­ly at some le­vel—and tend to do so in con­sist­ent ways, which art­ists can exploit.

Kandin­sky's "Composition VIII, 1923," in the Sol­o­mon R. Gug­gen­heim Mu­se­um, New York.

Some peo­ple con­scious­ly rea­lize the cross­o­ver of sen­ses in their brains, said the re­search­er, Ja­mie Ward of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. These in­di­vi­du­als have a rare con­di­tion in which the senses min­gle, called syn­aes­the­sia.

They may real­ly feel they hear paint­ings, for in­s­tance. But the con­di­tion does­n’t oc­cur on­ly with sound and sight: the most bi­zarre forms of it have been re­ported.

A stu­dy in the Aug. 22 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion, for ex­am­ple, found that some peo­ple link time and space. One de­s­cribed De­cem­ber as a red ar­e­a lo­cat­ed at arm’s length to the left of their bod­y.

Ward detailed find­ings of his own new stu­dies on syn­aes­the­sia at a talk at the Bri­t­ish As­so­ci­a­tion for the Ad­vance­ment of Sci­ence Fes­ti­val of Sci­ence in Nor­wich, U.K. this week. His work fo­cused on the sound-col­or-link­age of which Kan­din­sky spoke.

His found that most of us tend to agree with syn­aes­thetes on which im­ages match which sounds, and that we pre­fer them com­bined rath­er than alone.

[snip]

RCR