Convergence/Divergence Emily De Winton Gilbert

Final Film!

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:38:36 -0400

Final Film!

This is a rough edit of the inks, that will be over layed on the...

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:38:18 -0400

This is a rough edit of the inks, that will be over layed on the footage. Once again the audio is very wrong and not the finished version. The inks, although in need of some finalised tweaking, are looking effective and I am pleased with the result!

This is a partly finished film footage part of my final film. I...

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:26:41 -0400

This is a partly finished film footage part of my final film. I will overlay the ink over this video in order to create the effect. The audio for this is very wrong, so it is not the final piece. I am pleased with the pace of the editing and look forward to overlaying the ink!

Thoughts Before Editing

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:09:03 -0400

The editing of my film is a highly important aspect for the flow and sense of crescendo I intend to create. I want the editing between clips to become shorter and more dramatic as the film progresses. I also want to edit all my ink clips together so that they correspond with the audio as much as possible. Also, for the more movement-filled clips, filmed ink in water as opposed to paper to create the ripples in the water to give the feeling of movement and dramatic progression.
I also plan on reversing clips, speeding clips up and using lighting effects to create this crescendo.

Me, shooting stop-motion in the studio!

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:42:50 -0400

Me, shooting stop-motion in the studio!

Another technique I tried, pressing ink and washing up liquid...

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:04:59 -0400

Another technique I tried, pressing ink and washing up liquid between glass.

As my film builds up in a crescendo, I want the imagery to have...

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:02:35 -0400

As my film builds up in a crescendo, I want the imagery to have more and more a sense of movement and a kind of rhythm, so once again, drawing upon things that are around my own life which a Synaesthetes may perceive differently, I thought Magic Balls would be an interesting source of movement (and sound) to use. This sense of movement is also built up through the spinning of a bike wheel, a figure running- to create tension and a train to finish the film. I have storyboarded my final idea, and this has been some of the footage I plan to edit together. It quite a scary prospect, as in a way, I’m not entirely sure if the combination of it all will work! I hope for the film to build up in tension and have a sense of drama building towards the end. The E Book ‘Synaesthesia, A Union of the Senses’ has been a useful recourse that I would like to quote at the beginning of my film, instead perhaps of a film title. I like to think that the film will speak for itself in some ways.

Travelling through the mountains in Switzerland- potential...

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:18:32 -0400

Travelling through the mountains in Switzerland- potential beginning for my film with the bird noises!

Another film of a lake in Switzerland. These videos are meant to...

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:59:39 -0400

Another film of a lake in Switzerland. These videos are meant to be very simple, because the ink overlay will make the experience overwhelming in some aspects.

This is one of the many pieces of footage I plan to have under...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:01:14 -0400

This is one of the many pieces of footage I plan to have under the ink videos. These and the ink footage will correspond with the audio.

From the beginning of this project, I always wanted, or felt it...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:38:00 -0400

From the beginning of this project, I always wanted, or felt it would be good to record a train station, as I felt that it was a place that involves a more ‘sensory experience’. In the film, I have put a few things that I consider to be more personal to myself, or sensory things that I experience: ie: Cycling, cycling to the train station, forests, walking, travelling and so on. I really loved the idea of coloured numbers (as a Synaesthetes might see them) coming up as the voice over explains what train is due next. This video is just that. I want to overlay this on a section of my film using Key-lighting, which will work for this, but unfortunately not the ink drops.

This is a stop-frame I made a while ago. It involves ink and...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:32:30 -0400

This is a stop-frame I made a while ago. It involves ink and washing liquid pressed between two pieces of glass, as I pull the glass apart, it creates some incredible patterns. I think, once sped up, it will be a dramatic ending for my film.

This is my final audio for the film finished! Most of these...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:23:00 -0400

This is my final audio for the film finished! Most of these sounds were recorded in Switzerland in the mountains whilst I was staying with a friend!
I decided to make the audio express a crescendo of sounds leading to Sensory Overload- something many Synaesthetes experience. I am really loved putting this together, and its probably what I am most pleased with, the audio is going to dictate mainly what the visuals will do, so it has been an important aspect to develop.

http://www.freshmilk.fr/

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:38:41 -0400

Do you find this way of perceiving the world inspirational? If so, in what ways do you express the inspiration you gain?

I don’t know if I’d describe synesthesia as inspirational for me. I’m more just interesting in figuring out how mine works the way it does. I like creating art based on my synesthesia as a way of exploring it more for myself.

Sometimes I wonder if studying and developing my synesthesia encourages me to think in ways that allow me to link together radically different ideas (on the job as a graphic designer/ art director, in my research, etc.). I suppose this is the ‘quality’ that others recognize when they call me ‘random’ – our conversation is on one thing, it triggers another idea that I express, and that surprises people. In college, I think that was the phrase I heard the most often: “Rebekah, you’re so random!” (In France, I haven’t heard that because there is no direct translation for that idiomatic phrase!)

Art-wise, I find that trying to reproduce the synesthetic experience is really annoying. It just feels too “first degree” to me, and not interesting or deep enough. And perhaps too obvious an answer – it seems very cliché, and thus not ultimately interesting enough to have a real voice on the contemporary art scene.

And anyways, it seems like you can never truly represent what you perceive – you’re only just interpreting your own perception anyways! So why not do something more interesting with it – make a statement, ask a question – whatever, just do something else other than “my synesthetic perception = x y z.”

I have the feeling that an artist who is actively involved in the contemporary art scene needs to search a little farther and not just give an easy answer (I draw/paint/sculpt that because that is what I perceive), but perhaps search more deeply into things and ask other questions and try to find other answers, all while using synesthetic experiences and processes to inform their art.

(I think that trying to express your synesthetic experiences on a first degree basis is important, but for documenting and understanding yourself better, etc. Just because you draw something doesn’t make it art, for me.)

I’ve decided to work artistically with my synesthesia, and this began in February 2009 as a project I called “shapes for sound.” I take an experimental art class where there are no imposed subjects or techniques, and so I have been able to use this theme within the context of the class. As I was working on “shapes for sound,” I realized that there is quite a lot of exploitable material: topics that can be touched on, themes to be explored, techniques to be experimented, without necessarily trying to reproduce what synesthesia is like. I’ve barely even scratched the surface – there is just so much that can be done..

This initial work led to a huge project: drawing the song “The Art of Dying” by Gojira. This may sound very first degree, but it’s not necessarily just that, I believe…

Gojira is a French technical death metal band that I absolutely love for the intensity, the colors and the shapes of the synesthetic experiences I have while listening to them.

I decided to work using a Japanese-fold moleskin notebook (31 accordion-fold pages). I broke the song down into sequences, and allotted a certain number of pages to each sequence. These sequences loop on themselves, so I worked out a system where the album pages can be looped around each other – creating a sort of sculpture of the song structure. Thus the song – which is nearly 10 minutes long! – can be easily visualized in a compact form, allowing the listener to better understand it.

Death metal can sound like a lot of noise to a non-initiated ear – you have to have some sort of understanding of the structures, melodies and rhythms you are listening to in order to be able to interpret the sound. Drawing the sound synesthetically allows the non-initiated listener to more immediately comprend what he is hearing.

What I really like about my project though is the how the whole concept is based on loops or cycles. The structure is based on cycles, the sound itself is shaped in loops and cycles, and the theme of the song itself is death – yet another cycle. Once you get to the end of the book, the loops start all over again.

But there is synesthesia link to the meaning of the art of dying there too.

In “Tasting the Universe” by Maureen Seaberg, she talks about the Tibetan monks achieving a state of synesthesia through meditation, and of the Tibetan book of the dead… which talks about death as being a sort of progression towards synesthesia, where all the senses are mixed!

I was literally elated when I read this, because I realized that it gave the full “raison d’etre” to my project! I have been quite bothered by its first-degree basis (drawing an interpretation of what I see), but I’d justified it early on by the complexity of the folding and the looping system which symbolized the cycle of life and death. But when I read this bit about death, synesthesia and the Tibetan book of the dead, I realized that a drawing of synesthesia is the perfect way to interpret the art of dying.

The song asks how we can kill so easily, but not truly know how to die. Death, to me, is reaching a state of consciousness where your body no longer holds you back – and the steps to reaching that involve a state of letting-go of the senses… similar to synesthesia.

It is even more meaningful to me, as I watched my grandfather going through the process of dying over the past 2 months. He was 92 years old, and took a turn for the worst in February. I immediately flew back to the states when I heard the news, because we thought he was going to pass away right away. But he held on until April 18th. Dying was a difficult process for him, because he was really terrified of it and of losing control, and he said a number of times that he didn’t know how to get any peace. I’m very convinced now that there is an art to dying and letting go…

I’ve been working on this project during my free time over the past 2 years. I was able to meet the band and show them the project in July 2010… now I just need to finish it!

I’m currently working with a photoengraver and a printer, and this is quite a complex process. I’m working on finishing the drawings and coloring them. I’m finding myself more and more frustrated that my current design contracts take up so much of my time and energy, because I would love to be able to devote myself to the project 100%…

Interview with a Synaesthetes

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:34:00 -0400

What kind of Synesthesia do you have?

Strongest: Graphemes → color + shapes + texture Sound (music and noise, people’s voices, etc) → color + shapes + texture + spatiality + sensation in body Touch (when others touch me) /internal physical sensation → color + shape + spatiality Units of time / number / etc → color + shapes + spatiality

Less strong: Some smells → color + shapes Some tastes → color + shapes

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to my synesthesia over the past years and studying up on it quite a bit. I’ve noticed that as time has gone by and I’ve accepted my hypersensitivity, my synesthetic reactions have either been getting stronger and stronger, or I’m just able to identify them more immediately because they’re being attended to.

For example, when I go to the osteopath, get a massage, get acupuncture, take an alexander technique class, etc, I see colors and shapes based on the feelings in the different muscles, joints, etc. When a muscle is very tense, it is often a very dark color, and as it loosens up, it becomes lighter. I can tell that a spot needs more work, if I see a lot of dark color when the osteopath manipulates that area.

I recently got a piercing and I saw a yellow straw-shaped form with orange threads running down the side during the piercing process. The piercer later told me he used a hollow needle (which I wasn’t aware of beforehand – it was my first piercing).

I also have been having a great deal of trouble lately with my inner ear, which has been giving me nausea, vertigo, tinnitus and balance issues. When the vertigo is at its worst, it is black with white horizontal streaks. When it isn’t so bad, it’s a bit like a black sea with white splotches sloshing around. Each of the different types of sounds I hear from the tinnitus has a different color and texture.

I’ve noticed however that stress and caffeine have a direct effect on my being able to attend to my synesthetic reactions.

What are some of your memories of growing up with Synesthesia? From books I have read, most think that everyone sees the world as they do. Did you ever have any sense that you saw things differently?

I always thought that everybody saw things in color and shape like I did. In my immediate family, my mom and sister also have grapheme / units of time à color synesthesia. So I remember having discussions around the dinner table about what color different letters were (because of course they are different for each of us).

Then once I was further in school, I quickly realized that it was best to avoid talking about synesthetic experiences with others because they couldn’t imagine it, made fun of me, said I was making things up, etc.

I remember being especially frustrated with music. In the late 80’s/early 90’s, I got most of my music through the radio. Sometimes I didn’t know the name of a song and because I couldn’t sing very well, it was impossible for me to hum it to someone, to see if they knew the name of the song or the performer. I so often wished I could just show them the drawing of the song and its colors - it would have been much easier.

I have very distinct visual maps for the very first albums that I purchased, back when I was 12 years old, and very strong memories from those songs (like Guns n’ Roses’s Appetite for Destruction, for example). A lot of these visual maps are very particular, because the albums were on cassette tape – and this broke them up in a way that is totally different from CDs or MP3s. And a copied cassette tape looks very different from a purchased one.

Since we’ve moved to CDs and MP3s, I visualize albums differently. Since tracks are listed by numbers, those numbers often add a touch of color to the songs. And the general shape of my numberline has become a generic base for most of my visual maps for my CDs. Then the musical constructions (what the songs look like) come along and modulate that basic map.

Grapheme / units of time / numbers à color/shape/spatiality has definitely had a huge impact on my learning. I have a very easy time memorizing information, dates, places, prices, etc. I still have difficulties with math. If the math is too abstract and not visual enough (if I can’t visualize it on my number line) then I usually have a very hard time understanding or remembering what to do. This is an on-going problem, especially when I do the accounting for my business. I have to do most of my calculating using the rule of 3, to make sure it stays visual.

What I’m really interested in, is what you experience. So, in whatever ways you feel best, be it words, music, sound anything, I would be delighted to have an insight.

I like experiencing graphemes and time units with color. It’s like there’s a little shadow of color that passes behind my eyes when I look at letters. When I’m really stressed out, I attend to this less, but it doesn’t make it any less strong. If I attend to it, then I can really pay attention to all the little details.

Like how the colors of some letters will affect those of other colors, or what the textures of those colors are. Or where they actually fall on my alphabet line (because my alphabet is also arranged in 3D space, like numbers and months and days and any units of time).

Sound is my favourite thing. I like listening to very interesting sounds, just for what they look and feel like. It all happens right behind my eyes again. I can zoom in and out of the details – kind of like working in photoshop! – according to what part or aspect of the sounds I focus on.

I don’t have perfect pitch, and I don’t see specific colors for each note. I believe I’m more affected by the timbre of a sound and its quality – how clear or distorted it is. I really enjoy anything that has to do with complicated rhythms, because visually this becomes so interesting.

I’m sensitive to : • the types of musical sounds – if they aren’t visually interesting enough, they range from intensely boring to physically repulsive.

I generally don’t like music that has too much prominent piano or wind instruments. I also have very little interest in electronic music that is too soft, or too smooth.

I prefer organic sounds, that are noisy, fuzzy, hairy, furry, gritty, that have little things sticking out all over the place. I like heavily distorted sounds, especially if they don’t sound too heavily digitally processed. Though I do like electronic sounds that are very dirty and gritty.

• the colors and the shapes of songs – if they are too simple, grating, too easy to remember, trite, cheesy, etc – I will be immediately turned off because it’s all too predictable, visually.

The whole touch / physical sensation aspect is also very interesting to me. I see spots behind my eyes, sometimes projected onto whatever surface before my eyes, or sometimes it’s just an instinctive feeling – like if I’m getting a massage, I’ll just all of a sudden think “oh, that’s purple!” I like to talk about them when they are happening, which can cause problems if the person who’s working on me doesn’t understand the process.

I had a very bad experience at a spa in Brussels because of this. The woman who was giving me the massage didn’t want me to say anything to her at all, and this ruined the experience for me.

On the other hand, and I’ve also had very good experience with a chiropractor in the States after a car accident in 2009. This chiropractor adapted very quickly to the situation and because asking me directly what colors I was seeing, because I think he realized that I was giving him information that could help in the treatment.

When he pushed on different spots on my spine, neck and jaw, I could tell the areas that needed treatment – even if they didn’t necessarily hurt – because they were blue. Intensity of the blue seemed to change with the intensity of stiffness/out-of-place-ness. Some spots were different colors, and the chiropractor told me those spots felt like they were older tensions.

One of these spots was my jaw (I got hit in the chin with the airbag, but had jaw problems + orthodontics for 15 years when I was a teen). He was massaging the joint back into place, and the spot was yellow. Then he massaged 2 acupuncture points at the same time, and they were yellow too (up till that point, nothing else had been yellow). I told him so, and he said that didn’t surprise him because the acupuncture points corresponded to the same side of the face as my jaw problem.

Then, as he was adjusting my spine, he would push on certain vertebras. The ones out of place were bright blue, more or less intense. He popped a couple of them with his activator, and the blue disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. I was even convinced he wasn’t pushing at the same place on my spine!

This was an incredible experience for me, because it basically confirmed that I wasn’t just imagining things – that there is a true link between the things I see and what’s going on in the body.

Sharply painful sensations are more towards the white end of the spectrum; sometimes they are orange and yellow. (like getting cut or getting a root canal, etc.) The weird tension in the back of my neck from orthodontics is often yellow-green. Very tense muscles or joints out of place are often very dark tones – like dark blue, dark purple, dark green, dark red. Once they get more relaxed, the colors become lighter.

What benefits do you find from your experiences? Are there any drawbacks?

I like having synesthesia and I couldn’t imagine living without it. It makes remembering things so easy. I like being able to remember precise dates and prices and other information without too much trouble.

Synesthesia makes things very interesting for me and I like having new experiences so that I can discover more about how my particular types of synesthesia work.

It makes me very aware of what is going on with me, physiologically. This is a good thing, but it can also be difficult too. Doctors often really don’t know how to react, because I can sense things and am bothered by things that most people usually don’t notice or pay attention to.

I watched a really interesting documentary, where one Synesthetes, described his experience of being in a city as ‘being surrounded by giant 9’s’, he found it overwhelming. I suppose this could be described as sensory overload. Do you have experiences you wish to share related to this?

Sensory overload is a big problem for me. Synesthesia doesn’t make it more or less difficult, it just means - for me - that I experience sensory overload in a visual way.

• when my inner ear is bothering me a lot, I get overly sensitive to a lot of noises. They startle me or make me cringe. Food being scraped out of a saucepan, a heavy block of parmesan cheese being dropped on the wooden table, the doors on the kitchen cabinets being snapped shut. Visually, these noises are really pointy and sharp and just come out of nowhere. I feel physically aggressed not just by what I hear, but also by what I see.

When I’m out and about, if there is too much sound around me and too many people around, I get tired very quickly. Because I see all the sounds that I’m hearing, and I’m also having to navigate through so many people.

And being overly sensitive to smells is a real problem. There are smells that I notice that really bother me. They often have a very piercing aspect – like a core that is very strong and pervasive, usually yellow or light colored – it makes me feel VERY uncomfortable and aggressed. It’s like they get absorbed right into my body, and I can’t get them out. I will immediately leave places that have uncomfortable smells. This can happen with perfumes, in people’s houses or in stores that have a strange smell, dog smells, certain laundry detergents, etc.

I’m also very sensitive to the types of sound that we are exposed to in everyday life.

So this means I mute the TV during certain commercials, and I often put on my ipod if I’m in a store or other situation where I’m forced to listen to music that is too annoying (for example, shopping in the grocery story where Adele’s “Someone like you” comes on…).

One of the worst things for me is to go into a store that has a poorly-tuned radio piped throughout. If there’s even the slightest bit of static, I have to leave!

If there is any type of repetitive sound that is too sharp or difficult to listen to, I also have to leave.

At this ad agency I used to work at, the computer server used to whistle at a very high frequency, and no one else could hear it. It was a very sharp, light yellow sound that was painful to me. I had to wear earplugs at work because of this!

These are some really interesting images that Kate sent me with...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:43:58 -0400

Image 1

Image 2

These are some really interesting images that Kate sent me with regards to her visualisations. I’ve found them to be a highly useful insight into the final animation part of my film! This is her explanation of what she perceives when listening to music.

Image 1 - Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc

I chose to sketch this piece because it produces a vivid and striking image.

This pattern represents the main motif from the piece, with the beginning at the bottom of the page. It forms itself in my mind by billowing elegantly upwards - like smoke but with a much more defined shape. I find it interesting to analyse the shapes to see where each note is represented. In this sketch, the initial upward sweep is a note, the spiral consists of several notes, each of the subsequent curls is a note, and the final note is the upward sweep at the end. The shapes form themselves in time with the music and only stay fairly fleetingly. Their proportions when they are linear tend to coincide with the timing of the piece, but I’m not sure how well this is reflected in my drawing.

Image 2 - Twin Peaks Theme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75IQLqI_7g

I chose to sketch this piece because it is an example of an image that forms itself in a non-linear way.

This pattern creates itself in a more complex way, starting at the curl on the left, travelling clockwise around in a circle, and finishing with the curved shape coming from the lower right of the circle. Again, it is the main motif from the piece as I see it. The initial curl is not a note at all, it is simply a beginning. The two halves of the circle form the baritone guitar part, with the points where the circle doesn’t quite join representing the notes. The first two notes are those on the top half, and the following six notes on the keyboard are represented by the swirls on the top right. This is followed by two more baritone guitar notes (lower half of circle), and the tune then drifts dreamily off to the right, ascending in space as it goes.

If you listen to the whole piece, you will notice that it develops complexity as it progresses. The first few bars consist of similar shapes but with less details (for example there are two curls in the top right keyboard part rather than six).

Kate Hoskin, Answers My Questions

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:30:53 -0400

I was also delighted to be in contact with Kate, who kindly answered my questions, through words and image.

What kind of Synaesthesia do you have?

The most vivid type of synaesthesia I have is my perception of music as images with both shape and colour.

I have a maths degree, and see the realm of complex algebra as a vast landscape.

Words, letters and numbers have colours for me. Some words have tastes or smells for me too - these are rare, but the sensation is very strong.

I also have the type of synaesthesia where concepts such as the calendar manifest themselves as structures with colour, but this is less distinct than my musical synaesthesia.

What are some of you memories of growing up with Synaesthesia? From books I have read, most think that everyone sees the world as they do. Did you ever have any sense that you saw things differently?

When I was a child, I occasionally tried to talk about music in terms of shape (i.e. “the triangular bit of the tune”), but soon realised that this met with baffled looks from my parents! I remember very vividly hearing the theme from Twin Peaks (image to follow) when I was about 5, and confusing my parents by describing it as a circular tune. I didn’t hear it again until I was in my twenties - and of course it was still circular!

Although I was always aware of the images in my mind, I never realised their significance until I started university and became aware of synaesthesia as a concept. A few years later, I was working for Taylor and Francis, who published an excellent book on synaesthesia called “The Frog Who Croaked Blue”. After reading the book, I really began to engage with my synaesthesia, and this was around the time I started trying to draw my music images.

What I’m really interested in, is what you experience. So, in whatever ways you feel best, be it words, music, sound anything, I would be delighted to have an insight, however vague or hard to express!

I have heard that some synesthetes actually see images in front of them in their field of vision, but I see mine in my mind’s eye and, although they are always there, I can choose whether to focus my attention on them. The shapes I see are determined by the tune, and the colours largely by the instrument (although key changes affect the colour too). The patterns often bear a resemblance to the sheet music, but tend to be very abstract and sometimes move in more than one direction. They move so quickly that I need to repeatedly listen to the same few bars of a tune in order to make a sketch of it. My sketches include only ten or fifteen seconds of music, and drawing an entire piece would be a massive and slightly daunting task.

I have not yet figured out how to accurately incorporate the colours into my artwork, as for my favourite pieces of music they are often very complex. This is especially true of minor key tunes, which tend to be shimmering and iridescent, whereas with major key tunes the colours are more flat.

Polyphonic music (such as many of Bach’s compositions) often appears as a series of interweaving threads and looks very much like celtic knot-work.

My mathematical landscape synaesthesia is very difficult to describe because the mathematical concepts involved are very complicated, but it is basically like an alternate universe with mathematical axioms as its laws of physics. It has a spatial appearance and within it I can “see” mathematical proofs.

My occasional association of words with tastes and smells is a source of amusement because often the links seem very random and unexpected. An example of this is that the word ‘tawdry’ smells just like chicken poo!

What benefits do you find from your experiences?

I find some of my music images very beautiful and being able to see them greatly enriches my life - if I were to wake up one morning and find my musical synaesthesia gone I would be distraught. I’ve enjoyed expressing some of the images as sketches, although this is a very intense and painstaking process.

My other forms of synaesthesia, aside from providing entertaining quirks in my experience of life, are often useful for aiding my memory. When I prepared revision notes for university, they contained a lot of diagrams only I could understand and were often very colourful.

My mathematical synaesthesia helped me a lot in my studies, but it was tough when the maths got so difficult that concepts were hard to visualise. I felt at an advantage being able to “see” objects that to others were completely abstracted from concrete reality.

I write fiction and my mind often creates seemingly random links between things as a result of my synaesthesia, which I feel enhances my creativity (although it can occasionally confuse people!).

Are there any drawbacks?

I have to be very careful in choosing which music I drive to!

If I surrender myself to my synaesthesia, some of my favourite pieces of music can put me into a state of deep hypnosis. Whilst this makes me blissfully happy, it has often caused me to miss my bus stop or otherwise lose track of reality.

My musical taste is largely dictated by my synaesthesia, and this means that I will sometimes hear a piece of music that I know to be technically good, but will be unable to relate to it because it doesn’t produce vivid or interesting enough images. This never changes over time, and doesn’t significantly detract from my enjoyment of music. The main problem it produces is that it makes it difficult for me to talk about music with ‘normal’ people who don’t know me well. A good example is that people often expect me to see amazing images when an entire orchestra is playing with all drums and trumpets blaring out, when in fact this tends to look beige and shapeless to me (It’s a little like when you’re a child and try to mix every colour of plasticine together!) and hearing a single instrument playing a beautiful melody is usually much more evocative.

I watched a really interesting documentary, where one Synesthetes, described his experience of being in a city as ‘being surrounded by giant 9’s’, he found it overwhelming. I suppose this could be described as sensory overload. Do you have experiences you wish to share related to this?

When I was preparing for my Chemistry A-Level, I found that my synaesthesia helped me to envision how molecules interacted with each other. However, shortly before my exams I had a very high fever, which resulted in a vivid nightmare involving massive multi-coloured atoms smashing dramatically into one another all around me. Similarly, after I finished my exams for my maths degree I would sometimes have vivid nightmares about being trapped in my mathematical landscape and having to rearrange parts of it to solve equations in order to escape!

I am lucky that I can usually “tune out” my synaesthesia in situations where it would prove unhelpful. The only exception is that I am occasionally taken aback when a word with a strong taste or smell arises - if it’s an unpleasant one it’s sometimes an effort to prevent myself from saying “uurgh” out loud!

Do you find this way of perceiving the world inspirational? If so, in what ways do you express the inspiration you gain?

Yes, the fact that I perceive the world in a different way from everyone else makes me feel as though I have a lot to contribute creatively. Sometimes I wish I could simply transmit my musical visions to my friends by telepathy, but since this is sadly not possible I’m exploring methods for expressing this unique aspect of my experience.

The best representation I can provide of my musical synaesthesia is through my drawings, but my images would be more accurately represented as animations. It is my dream to be able to share my vivid experiences with other people - my favourite piece of music is an hour long, and I would love to create an animation to demonstrate what I see when I listen to it.

I think this way of seeing the world can explain a lot about creativity. Even if you are not Synesthetes, in order to be creative, you have to see things in a different way to others, or to express life in a different way to others? Any thoughts, objections or otherwise tangents you wish to discuss?

Creativity, to my mind, is rooted in the ability to offer a perspective on life that is different from the norm, and to provoke thought in doing so. To this end, I believe synaesthesia can be instrumental in creative expression, especially where those perceiving the work can understand the link to the original stimulus. It is, however, sometimes difficult for me to gauge whether people looking at my artwork can relate it back to the music, because for me the melody and the image are inseparable.

I am always fascinated by ‘different’ ways of perceiving the world (the stranger the better!) as I am inspired by the way that these can challenge my assumptions about reality and affect my own experiences. As a synaesthesic person, my view of the world is never dull or prosaic, and is often full of surprises.

theshapeofsounds.com

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:13:13 -0400

This is the website of Timothy B Layden who is a Synaesthetic artist who also creates his own audio tracks he calls ‘soundscapes’ which I have found useful and inspiring to my own work. I would blog his images, but I can’t get save them off of his website (which is fair enough!)
I have been in brief contact with him, and he kindly agreed to answer a few of my Questions:

What kind of Synaesthesia do you have? (Feel free to elaborate as much as you like, I have no restrictions!)

Sounds evoke shape, Time concepts evoke spatial and colour perceptions

What are some of you memories of growing up with Synesthesia? From books I have read, most think that everyone sees the world as they do. Did you ever have any sense that you saw things differently?
Yes but I did not know there was a name (synestheisa). I still think I see things differently in ways that do not have names.

What I’m really interested in, is what you experience. So, in whatever ways you feel best, be it words, music, sound anything, I would be delighted to have an insight, however vague or hard to express!
See www.theshapeofsounds.com

What benefits do you find from your experiences? Better memory linked to sound and situations.
An understanding of movement and turbulence

Are there any drawbacks?
Occasional discomfort from sensory overload

I watched a really interesting documentary, where one Synesthetes, described his experience of being in a city as ‘being surrounded by giant 9’s’, he found it overwhelming. I suppose this could be described as sensory overload. Do you have experiences you wish to share related to this?
When things are very noisy it can feel like sharp objects are being thrown at me.

Do you find this way of perceiving the world inspirational? If so, in what ways do you express the inspiration you gain?
It is inspirational. I play with sound and image through art.

I think this way of seeing the world can explain a lot about creativity. Even if you are not Synesthetes, in order to be creative, you have to see things in a different way to others, or to express life in a different way to others? Any thoughts, objections or otherwise tangents you wish to discuss?
I think that finding connections and associations between things is very important for creativity, but these could be related to synesthesia or not.

And then his own piece of writing from his website :)

“synesthesia means “joined sensation” (Greek syn = together + aisthesis = perception), wherein

two or more senses are coupled such that a voice, for example, is not only heard, but also felt,

seen, or tasted.” - Richard E. Cytowic, the Synesthesia Encyclopedia (2004)

Every morning I have a cup of coffee while playing music. There is something very special about this activity because it is entirely mine and I allow myself to get lost in it without any expectations. I have two guitars: a steel string and a nylon string. The steel string creates dancing crystals and liquid metal that weave around me making a texture. I also experience weaving textures with the nylon string but the shapes seem softer, more like glycerine and cotton wool being pulled apart. I figure the feeling of the shapes has to do with the timbre of the sounds while the weaving links to the rhythm or patterns the sounds develop over time. I don’t always experience weaving with guitar sounds. For example, the music of the Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia is more like amber golden pearls that melt and drip into themselves. Jimi Hendrix’s distorted guitar sounds create a multi coloured web of fibres that break off from each other and cling together again; they are sticky like cotton candy.

Throughout the day I let my experience of moving sound shapes flow around me like a soft breeze which is mostly pleasant and not distracting. Every now and then I hear a sound that does something unexpected and a shape will fly past me stealing my attention for a moment then vanish; gone as quickly as it appeared. At times I can be suddenly ambushed by sounds like sirens or noisy motorcycle engines that can be more aggressive like sharp stones or metallic spikes crashing down on me.

Through music I actively seek out specific sounds that create shapes and patterns I enjoy. I go to my studio and listen to music like Charled Mingus which creates shapes like exploding crystals, dark satin dripping like hot chocolate and swirling cream in a hot cup of coffee. I also like The Legendary Pink Dots, whose music contains such an array of unexpected sounds that listening to them can be like going on an alien safari where such outlandish things appear as liquid creatures chasing splintered glass.

I am an interdisciplinary artist who experiences synesthesia. THE SHAPE OF SOUNDS is a series of sound and visual art. The work explores how the invisible world of sound can manifest itself visually through an overlapping of the senses.

There are particular kinds of sounds that give me a strong synesthetic reactions. I capture the sounds that give me strong reactions by recording them; I carry a small recorder with me to hunt them down and capture them or I use objects and instruments to create them and capture them in my studio. With these recordings I create soundscapes. While editing the soundscapes I create drawings that outline the trajectory and morphing of the objects. Once I finish editing a soundscape, I create a mixed media study on upon which I externalise my sense of colour and shape for the sounds, like creating a landscape. Finally I create larger mixed media paintings that give snapshots of the experience of movement frozen in time.

All in all, a pretty interesting and amazing way of perceiving the world! His shapes and colours have given some valuable insight into the animation section of the project!

Re-thinking the Project!So this was what I thought was going to...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:47:51 -0400

Re-thinking the Project!

So this was what I thought was going to be my Official audio track for my film/animation. I originally decided I wanted the piece to deal with contrasting sounds between natural and man-made elements. So in my mind the film assumed this kind of ‘shape’: .<>.<>.<>.<>.
I have been in contact with the UK Association of Synaesthesia: http://www.uksynaesthesia.com
Who have been amazingly helpful. I have been in contact with three individuals who are part of their contacts, who all experience Synaesthesia, which has been fascinating.
One particular individual linked me to his website which had an audio track playing whilst his images were showing. It was such an intriguing audio that it really made me re think this one I started, as I found my own really boring to listen to, which was worrying me, because I want my film to be engaging!
This lead me to completely re think the ‘shape’ of my film, which I then decided should build up in sound and atmosphere, as opposed to the contrasting idea I previously had.
Therefore, it is now this shape: .<
Which I think will be much more exciting!

This is one of the first audio tracks I tried mixing for this...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:15:06 -0400

This is one of the first audio tracks I tried mixing for this project. Discovering Adobe Audition has been a bit of a revelation for me, as I have been recording and mixing my own music for years on Audacity! Its just a collection of recordings from a day out in London, mostly just to familiarise myself with the program. The Audio track for this film is going to be important, as it will lift the images from the screen and make them exciting.