Videos on
synesthesia:
There
is a new video on Youtube of a synesthetes alphabet colors and numbers. You will also find Richard Cytowic's lectures and David Eagleman’s recent documentary.
In a similar vein Cassidy Curtis has built a flash applet that will display the colors of her synesthetic alphabet as you type. She makes some observations
about memory as well.
Bidirectional synesthesia – most people report that synesthesia is unidirectional
– letter to color but no color to letter for example. In some cases people report bidirectional synesthesia. New research
using EEG and fMRI shows this is indeed the case and that bidirectional synesthesia may be more common than thought before.
The paper is in press and due out soon. A copy of the abstract can also be found here. What Color Is
A?
MRIs Peek into the Brains of Synesthesia Patients Synestheisa and Engineering and Maths
I came
across an interesting article by Clive Maxwell an engineer who has synesthesia and reports on a case of colors for different schematic shapes in circuit
diagrams. There is a drawing on the article some of you might find interesting or can relate to.
Musicans with synesthesia and songs about synesthesia |
 | This page will feature current musicians with synesthesia or songs with synesthetes featured in
the lyrics. For each entry there will be a link where you can hear the song or read about the band. At the moment I am building
the page so If you find anymore I would really be interested in adding them to this page so please email me the details. For
those who are interested in historical accounts of synesthesia in music, Sean Day has written an excellent piece
on the subject and it can be found here. His website also has a page that lists some current musicians with synesthesia, such as Eddie Van Halen, Jennifer Paull and Micheal Torke
as well as other famous musical synesthetes such as Listz, Olivier Messiaen and Duke Ellington. | |
ARTISTS
Read an article about Steve Glass - an Australian Artist who paints the colors and shapes
of the music he sees.
Steve Glass Article from the Leader
Trash McSweeney is the lead singer of the band and is a synesthete. He keeps a web journal and many of his comments are related to his synesthesia.
The band encourages painting at their concerts. You can see some of the art that is created at their concerts on their
website and you can hear some of their music on their myspace page. (There is a fantastic version of the Tears for Fears song Mad World that is worth a listen). These guys have a new CD coming
out soon - stay tuned for that one.
The Red Paintings have released their new EP called Feed the Wolf. Also released is their DVD - Seizure and Synesthesia. A my space review can be
Chris Duncan and Catherine Strutt - Australia's superlative Scottish music duo.
Catherine Strutt
is a synesthete and was featured on the ABC show CATALYST in 2002. You can buy their CD's from
the ABC shop online or have a listen to a sample there as well. They have 2 Cdsout - one new one The Red House and an earlier one Fyvie's Embrace. The CDs have received some fantastic reviews.
 Chris Duncan and Catherine Strutt played at the The Turning Wave Festival, 15,16 September 2007, Gundagai, NSW. Their latest CD New CD "The Red House" was the WINNER of The National Film and
Sound Archive - Best Folk Recording for 2007.
Messiaen
There was a production of Messiaen's Turangalila- symphonie 10 August - 13 August by the Sydney Symphony. Messiaen was a famous synesthete.
Songs
Cylinders - Fujiya & Miyagi have written a song that includes references to a woman with synesthesia. You can hear some of their songs on their my space. The song about the synesthete is called Cylinders. (although you can't play all of
this one for free as you can with some of the others). It starts with references to a colored alphabet building
block set, a female left hander, and colored hearing with a reference to sound taste synesthesia as well. - OK so
I really like their music too.
#6 Synesthesia - Tommy Wallach has writtten a song called synesthesia - its kind of cute. should give you a little chuckle. Click to listen to the
song webcast.
Australian Commentary
Color Music is a site by Neils Hutchison. It hosts some interesting historical information about color music in Australia.
Attempts to create color or music systematically from other sources
There have been many attempts to create color from music in a systematic way throughout history. Pianos which produce
colored light shows when played are one such example.
Here is an interesting article about a couple of researchers (one is a classically trained pianist) who have turned gene sequences into computer code and
then into music. It’s an interesting idea and you can hear some examples of it here. The Huntingtin one sounds OK. It occurred to me that if the idea was that the human ear may be able to detect these sequences
(or mutations of same) as pieces of music in large data files then synesthetes with music to color or shape would likely be
able to spot these sequences even faster/better.
‘Synaesthesia’ is a program that gives a graphical accompaniment to music. Anyone can make some pretty piece of graphics that flashes in
time to the music. I haven’t tried it – I would be interested to hear from any of you that do.
Looks like Brian Eno doesn’t have color grapheme synesthesia but certainly seems to use color
in his musical compositions. See attached article from his recent art exhibition called '77 Million Paintings'.
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