Well Color This Green

So, cymatics is AWESOME! When I was a kid I used to love watching the VOX visualization in Windows Media Player while my tunes played (especially Selling the Drama, which is the best Live album). The idea of being able to see sound is beautiful.

Perhaps, I’m a little biased.

Spencer Addison wrote a piece about how sight was the most beautiful sense that we were given and continued to enumerate the reasons why in a way befitting the Enlightenment Period in England. Afterwards, I pondered which of the senses I treasure most, and I actually love sound more than sight—my friend, Ashley, told me that I’m a “bad filmmaker” in jest. I just love sound. I love words and the way they sound, the echo of an object dropping to the floor, the tapping of fingertips on different solids. Sound is so beautiful.

Since cymatics is so awesome, that would mean by extension that synesthesia is also awesome. While, I am not lucky enough to have synesthesia, I do associate certain smells, words, and sounds with different colors. I often get strange looks when I ask what “that pink smell” is.
When I first saw read the Wikipedia articles about synesthesia, I thought of Harry Smith’s Early Abstractions, which we watched in Shannon’s 302 Experimental class. I don’t think Harry Smith would meet Richard Cytowic’s criteria for being a bonafide synesthete, he certainly played with color in a way that gave a new feel to the Beatle’s songs that he chose—I’m sure the acid helped.

I find it interesting that the Neurological Synesthesia article reports both that most synesthetes do not know that their condition is strange, but they also keep it a secret their whole lives. If they don’t know it’s strange, are they really keeping it a secret or are they simply living their lives?
In the Synesthesia in Art article, I really appreciated a lot of the artistic rendering of things that are not thought of as visual. Carol Steen’s discussion of Visions (as shown in the margin) was really interesting. Does that really count as synesthesia though? She painted something she saw no matter how abstract. I sometimes see different colored spots when I get up too fast. Does that count as synesthesia?

The idea of visual music is intriguing, but I sometimes wonder if I get it. There was a film that we watched in 302 that was a bunch of lines, and I thought that was quite good. I can’t remember, who made the film, but it was the only time I felt I could hear the music according to what was on the screen.
I really can’t remember, and it’s going to bother me all night.