Seeing Sounds and Hearing Colors

somberlain writes "BBC has an interesting article about people who hear colours and see sounds. Luckily I don't have this medical condition: but which sounds do you want to colorize?" This is an old story, but just reading the woman's descriptions of her condition make it worth linking.

Comments

It's called synaesthesia....

[crucible]

and can also be chemically induced by the consumption of LSD.

Re:It's called synaesthesia....

[floydigus]

And also from ketamine. Apparently.

Re:It's called synaesthesia....

[ZiggyM]

and magic mushrooms (psilocybin) and probably many others I havent tried (peyote, ayawasca etc). I usually experience something similar on higher doses, all senses become one and they make "sense" under that state of mind, its not just a mixup/confusion of senses.

Re:It's called synaesthesia....

[rizzo420]

you should try diviner's sage. it's legal.

Re:It's called synaesthesia....

[rizzo420]

"There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third." - Timothy Leary

Ted Turner and his colorization binge

[dpilot]

Just wondering what those with synaesthesia think of colorized movies. Or for that matter, what they think of dubbed foreign language films.

Do the picture/sound clash more or less on "tampered" movies more or less than on the original?

Re:Ted Turner and his colorization binge

[Twirlip of the Mists]

As I said in another post, I have a really mild form of synaesthesia, so my experience may not be typical. But I don't really think anything of colorized movies one way or another-- except to say that they're kinda ugly most of the time.

Dubbed movies, on the other hand... every language has its own texture. English is hard to evaluate, because it's my native language; I can't hear it without understanding it, so I don't usually notice the sound of it. But other languages sound kind of like... movement. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's hard to explain.

Japanese is spikey and hard, all elbows, because of all the "ta-ta-ta" sounds. It's like barging your way through a crowd. Chinese kind of sways, like a tree in a strong wind, sliding into all the curves. Russian is like driving over speedbumps, all up-down-up-down. French is like twirling, but without the getting dizzy and falling down parts. Italian is like dancing.

So it's not so much that there's a "clash" between the new soundtrack and the pictures, but when you dub from one language into another you lose that unique sense of movement.

Does any of this make any sense?

Re:Ted Turner and his colorization binge

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not synaesthetic, but I think it makes sense.

It's no wierder than imagining that a piece of paper folded into an M is inverted, or looking at sterograms, both of which are voluntary but unobvious and I do them.

Re:Ted Turner and his colorization binge

[blank_coil]

...imagining that a piece of paper folded into an M is inverted...

I don't get that. What does that mean? Like, folded how? And how would it be inverted? From a side view I could see it folded like this: /\/\ but how is that iverted?

"The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sourd,"

[Spock the Baptist]

"Be it sight, sound, smell, or touch,
There's something inside, that we need so much.
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an oak, with roots, deep in the ground.
The wonder of flowers, to be covered, and then to burst up,
Through tarmac, to the sun again, or to fly to the sun,
Without burning a wing, to lie in a meadow,
And hear the grass sing. To have all these things,
In our memories hoard, and to use them,
To help us, to find the lost chord... " --The Moody Blues, In Search of the Lost Chord

looks like...

[Zapper]

Gives a new meaning to the phrase:

"Your stereo looks like shit" .

Great...

[ConceptJunkie]

Now Ted Turner will want to go around colorizing old Benny Goodman records.

Actually, ive heard that most of the folks

[Unknown Poltroon]

that have this condition dont mind or enjoy it. If this is the same as other articles i remember, they think a lot of artists may have this to varying degrees. I mean, imagine being able to watch the music and see how it will sound by eye?

Re:Actually, ive heard that most of the folks

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, imagine being able to watch the music and see how it will sound by eye?

That depends on the music. For me, Classic ususally is blue in various shapes, depending on the composer. Mozart, for example is a lighter blue than, say, Wagner. Pop generally is purple (maybe because I don't like either) and Rock is black.

Re:Actually, ive heard that most of the folks

[Rubyflame]

That's why Winamp has all those visualization plugins.

Re:Actually, ive heard that most of the folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard James of Aphex Twin is synesthic. I am, as well. I think that to a certain extent, everyone has sense mixing. It's just subconscious in most people, and contributes to how they categorize their environment. More rare are these extreme cases where it's completely conscious. It is known to be a superb memory aid. There is a book by Aleksandr R. Luria entitled "The Mind of a Mnemonist" about a man who combines his synasthesia with mnemonic memory techniques for total recall of anything. It has helped me develop my memory as well, though not to that extreme extent.

Unfortunately

[incog8723]

It doesn't make for great art. That stuff is putrid. I certainly hope that her artwork is what my voice looks like.

Synaesthesia?

[dacarr]

I specifically remember in 1st grade, the music appreciation teacher had attempted to get us to learn to more or less do this - basically, seeing with one's ear and hearing with one's eyes. Sort of an exercise in learning how to read/transcribe music. I really wish I could remember the name of the text, but then this is from over 20 years ago.

Another one is from Thomas Appell's material, "Can you sing a high C without straining?", brought to you by Vocal Dynamics - within the material, Tom instructs the prospective student to "see" the notes as individual colors, even providing a standard major scale in C (the musical key, not the language) as an example in living color.

It makes me curious then, how many musicians on any scale are even slightly affected by this condition?

Re:Synaesthesia?

[Urox]

Probably the composers. A friend of mine wrote a piano piece about blue and it really did feel like blue to me (I play several musical instruments).

People have colors to me, but how is that to be distinguished from what many people call auras? And the color impressions are the same there as well: individual and meaning the most to the person who actually see them.

Lots of visuals have sound (as opposed to sound having color.. but I hear that too as mentioned earlier) but how is that distinguished from other things we associate with an object? Could be just projection.

I think that musicians are just more in tune with associations as opposed to having a different wiring.

Re:"The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sourd,

[dacarr]

Logical moderation: -1 for copyrighted material, +1 for violating the DMCA, +1 because I like the Moody Blues, +1 interesting. Your total LM is +2. Have a nice day. =)

Color "Signature"?

[MagnetarJones]

I'm wondering if each person has a unique color "signature"

If so, could a scanner be developed that sees these signatures and identify people from a distance?

Gone will be the days of thumbprints and retina scans. Now you can be identified without even being aware of it.

Re:Color "Signature"?

[Catskul]

The color sensations come from synaptic links in the brain. The colors are not intrasinct with the actual sound (or concepts), but made up by our brain based on our experience or innate wireing.

"I'm wondering if each person has a unique color 'signature' If so, could a scanner be developed that sees these signatures and identify people from a distance? "

Any kind of "scanner" doesnt really make sense in this context. Also, the woman can see sounds, and the sound of each pesons name has a color and/or image. So, even on top of the sensations relying on a human brain, its based on sound, so your "scanner" would have to be listening; and listening to what ? voices ? they already have sofware that identifies people by voices.

Incidently when developling software to recognize sounds or voices, the sound is normaly converted into an image before being identified. Here is an image of a voice print

I wish I had this condition

[spudwiser]

I could save thousands on drugs. When you start hearing code and seeing machine cycles, though, it's time to slow down.

Here's my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in a quiet suburb and I had a room in the b

Re:Here's my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Anyways, I was in the basement and as I was drifting to sleep, the light fixtures would go 'ding' as they cooled, and if I was in the right 'sleep spot', I would see the coolest colored swirls and stars generated by the bings.

I have this

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have this condition, but in what I guess is a more mild form. I don't associate sounds with colors-- UNTIL NOW!-- but I do associate words and letters with colors and... um... tastes, kind of.

I guess it started in the first grade or so, when I was learning to read. The letter "A" (capital A, that is) has always been sort of a bright red color, and smelled and tasted sweet, like cherry-flavored candy. "B" is purpley-blue, and chewy. "C" is lemony yellow. And so on. When I visualize any of those letters in my head, the color and the texture, or taste, or smell come along with them. It's hard to explain, I guess, if you don't know what I'm talking about.

When I was growing up, I just assumed everybody was like this. I turn 30 next month, and it was only earlier this year that I learned that I was different from most people. I was talking about our new house with my girlfriend, and I said something like, "Let's paint that room blue... sort of an 'M' blue." She had no f*cking idea what I was talking about, and that's how I learned that I was unusual in this way.

Since then I've kinda been reading up on synaesthesia a little bit in my spare time. Funny coincidence that this should come up on Slashdot at about the same time.

Re:I have this

[yelligsc]

Interesting.. but seriously, this NEVER came up in 30 years?

Scott.

Re:I have this

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No, never. I didn't even know this condition, or whatever you call it, had a name until about four months ago. I just figured everybody else saw colors in letters, just like I do.

Re:I have this

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I first talked about it with my wife about five years ago. At first she thought I was crazy, but a little research convinced her that it is a relatively normal condition.

I have the colored letters and numbers form and the colored taste form. Its not debilitating in any way. The best way to think about it is like this: would a color-blind person think that having full color vision would be confusing? Or would a deaf person find the ability to hear overwhelming?

When you have synaesthesia it doesn't seem weird or abnormal at all, no more so than having the full complement of unimpaired senses.

Re:I have this

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have the colored letters and numbers form and the colored taste form.

If you're curious-- and as google fodder-- the colored-letter form is called "chromograephemic synaesthesia," or "chromographemic synasthesia," depending on which side of the pond you're on.

Further Reading

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I recommend The Man Who Tasted Shapes for a readable and interesting account of synesthesia.

Re:Further Reading

[tartley]

Alfred Bester wrote several science fiction books containing descriptions of this condition.

The Stars My Destination (aka Tyger, Tyger) is the most famous and most prominent example.

He was also notorious for experimenting with typography in 'visually onomatapiec' ways - by which I mean he arranged words and fonts on the page to resemble the sounds and actions they described. Stars (above) uses this a lot. To a lesser exent, so does Psychoshop.

The Demolished Man contains none of the above, but it's a freaking classic so it gets an honorable mention. (-: -- Tartley http://tartley.com

Window pane

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I had that effect a few times. Must be over 20 years ago now.
Drop a whole one and in an hour you were there.
The visuals I had experienced, and wanting to
recreate them is what made me pursue computer
graphics as a career.

The colorsoundvisuals cross wiring was cool.
I also thought that it was interesting that much of the
visual hallucinations were geometric in form. It made
me think that there's some basic templates in the
brain that knew of these things at the "firmware"
layer. Then again, maybe I was just really fucked up.

Feedback loop?

[Vuzz]

I'm just wondering... If by looking at something they heard sounds and by hearing sounds they see things...Can they experience a feeback loop?

If they get into a feedback loop, how does it sound/look like?

--Vuzz

Re:Feedback loop?

[Anonymous Coward]

gain structure nets negative. Thankfully. neuro-Feedback loops are seizures.

so thats how

[k3v0]

pink floyd made the wizard of oz match dark side of the moon, and the lesser know match up of the song Echoes with the movement of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It starts when Dave is shooting through space in the suit, and continues to the end of the film if i remember correctly. and i'm sure some other things helped...

Related to the history of the WWW

[David Leppik]

From http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html:

"Robert Cailliau made the WWW icon in many colors but chose green as he had always seen W in his head as green."

I want a new drug

[drox]

[I wish I had this condition] I could save thousands on drugs

Actually, I think I'd rather have a (safe, reliable, flashback-free, won't-destroy-your-brain) drug that induces this. That way I could turn the condition on or off at will, just by taking or not taking the drug.

It sounds like it could be fun, and maybe even useful as an aid to creativity/productivity but I can see real problems with having synaesthesia all the time. Just like a caffeine buzz can be useful for getting through long nights of coding but would be no fun to have all the time, so I imagine it'd be with synaesthesia.

When and if a safe synaesthetic agent becomes available, I'd also like to be able to buy it from a pharmacist, instead of on the street. Maybe it's misplaced trust, but I'd still trust my synapses to the friendly neighborhood druggist - or even ConHugeCo Pharmaceuticals - before I'd trust some stranger selling the stuff out of a car trunk.

But the chances are miniscule that the FDA would approve a drug like that (even if a safe and effective one were found). Too much potential for recreational use....

Re:I want a new drug

[cbv]

It sounds like it could be fun, and maybe even useful[...]

Useful? Certainly. Fun? Not so. I remember way back at Elementary, when we got asked how much "5+2" is, and I said "green"... I can still hear them laughing at me...

Re:I want a new drug

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I remember way back at Elementary, when we got asked how much "5+2" is, and I said "green"... I can still hear them laughing at me...

Of course they laughed, you twit. 5+2 is obviously a sort of yellow-gold color! 4+3 is green!

Yes, that's right folks, synaesthetic arithmetic follows its own rules.

Re:I want a new drug

[cbv]

Of course they laughed, you twit. 5+2 is obviously a sort of yellow-gold color! 4+3 is green!Yes, that's right folks, synaesthetic arithmetic follows its own rules.

Very funny... Seriously though, I would like to know how others perceive numbers. My guess is, everyone has his or her own colour scheme.

Re:I want a new drug

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I wasn't kidding. 5 is saturated yellow, and 2 is bright red, so 5+2 looks sort of golden. 4 is light green and 3 is dark blue, so 4+3 is darkish-green.

Of course, if you're talking about the actual sum, then 7 is yellow, or maybe yellowy-green in the right context.

There's a really interesting paper called "Trends in Synesthetically Colored Graphemes and Phonemes." It concludes that while chromographemic synaesthetes (people who perceive letters as having colors) don't all share the same perceptions, there are some clear trends in letter-color association. It's short; check it out.

Re:I want a new drug

[cbv]

Of course, if you're talking about the actual sum, then 7 is yellow, or maybe yellowy-green in the right context.

Come to think about it, it does have a yellowy tint to it, though I would still call it 'green'.

It concludes that while chromographemic synaesthetes don't all share the same perceptions[...]

Yes I know. From talking with others, I seem to have a slightly different perception. Eg. I don't "see" letters as colours at all, while others have that "problem" with numbers.

Re:I want a new drug

[Anonymous Coward]

LSD, man. Safer than you'd think. Do some research. GET THESE FLEAS OFF OF ME!!!!

Yeah but...

[drox]

That stuff is putrid. I certainly hope that her artwork is what my voice looks like

Yeah but art appreciation is notoriously subjective. One person's masterpiece is another's putrid crap.

I for a long time have enjoyed Wassily Kandinsky's works, though until I read the article I wasn't aware that he was synaesthetic. Makes me wonder what sounds (smells, tastes, sensations) he had in mind when creating them.

Internet Tragedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Stories about pictures without showing the pictures. Ok they showed some small pictures but they weren't very good.

Inner Eye..

[Wiwi Jumbo]

From her description, it seems that she's not really "seeing" the sound... at least not with her real eyes... seems more like a third, inner eye which gets the colour... so her eyesight doesn't change anything

I wonder if this could be realated to a stereo with a VU meter... you hear the sound with the speakers, but you also "hear" the music with your eyes on the VU meter...

Nah... that's not a very good example...

Here's a quiz I'd like you all to take?

[dolphin558]

Before the quiz......

Whenever I think of a month of the year or the seasons my mind brings up literally a calender. January - May are on the left side and June-December for some reason are on the right.

Now that I think about it. I do have some mild form of color associations. October is a much lighter color than November. December is a brownish color(i'm not a big fan of brown but this shade is beautiful). Maybe I'm making the December color up but the Oct/Nov mental image is definitely there.

Quiz::::::

Does anyone else have a mental calender. Please answer this question: When counting the number of months between a set of 2 months how does your mind calculate it? I see months as Numbers(June=6, May=5) while also viewing the "mental calender" for confirmation.

Re:Here's a quiz I'd like you all to take?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting enough but i tend to visual the calendar system liek this too... however I just thought everyone else did it like this too! ;)

Re:Here's a quiz I'd like you all to take?

[ruriruri]

i see a clock. instead of the twelve numbers, i see the twelve months. december is at 6, march at 9, june at 12, september at 9, etc.

and for the color part:
december is slate-gray with blue in the middle and white toward the end, january is december without the gray, february is a gray gradient, march is kind of a dull rose, redder toward the beginning, april is yellow-green, much like the word "neuron", may is red, june is yellow, july is a nice violet with flecks of pale yellow, august is light gray, mottled like clouds, especially the u's, september is a red-orange-yellow spectrum, with a sharp break between sep and tember, october is sort of like september, but darker and with more browns, and like it was put through an unsharp mask, and november is like a charcoal sketch of sleet in a strong wind.

also, in a morisette-ironic kind of way, "synaesthesia" is a blend of many primary and secondary colors arranged like blurry baloons.

Re:Here's a quiz I'd like you all to take?

[doc_side]

i cant see the numbers associated to the months in my head, i just gotta count out the months on my finger. which makes me mad, because i know it comes from when i was in first grade, and they said it was ok to addd on your fingers. so, even though i know how to add in my head, i freak out if i cant do it on my fingers first.

Re:Here's a quiz I'd like you all to take?

[BluBrick]

It's got nothing to do with synaesthetics, but I count the months on my knuckles to work out the number of days, rather than running through the old "Thirty days hath September" rhyme.

You start with January on the knuckle of the left pinky, and February on the gap between the pinky and the ring finger, working to the right as you go. Knuckles have 31 days, gaps do not. It just seems to work quicker than the rhyme, perhaps because the rhyme reauires you to perform a "pattern match" against an unordered list.

Autism

[Anonymous Coward]

This article doesn't mention that people on the autistic spectrum sometimes are affected by this, especially when we sensory overload. It shouldn't be too difficult to find information on the internet about children with Asperger's Syndrome who sometimes experience this condition.

Cheaper than LSD

[BoBaBrain]

There's a more straight forward way to mix your sences than LSD.

Close your eyes and (gently) press your fingers to your eyelids. Those funky, psycadelic colours you see are not caused by light, but be pressure.

Re:Cheaper than LSD

[teamhasnoi]

I did it too hard and now I can't see! Bad trip, man, bad trip!!! Ahhhh.....my eyes, they burn!!!

Wow, listen to that beautiful sunset...

[Tidan]

Wonder what it actually sounds like when they look up at the sky. Do they hear "BLUE...BLUE..BLUE...BLUE..."?

Re: also see Mind of a Mnnemist by Luria

[Anonymous Coward]

Also check out Mind of a Mnemnist by Aleksandr R. Luria.

Luria documents a man with apparently a photographic memory, who seems never to forget things. The man apparently had synesthesia, and Luria hypothesized that the additional sensory cues helped the mnemnist identify memories.

Similiar Association - Gender

[Bonker]

I've noticed that many people, my self included, try to assign genders to colors, sounds, words, numbers, even letters.

Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Black, Brown Beige - Male
Blue, Purple, Pink, Tan, Gray, White - Female

C, D, G, H, J, L, M, N, O, T U, W, Z - Male
A, B, E, F, I, K, P, Q, R, S, V, X, Y - Female

1, 4, 5, 7, 0 - Male
2, 3, 6, 8, 9 - Female

Mirrored and transparent surfaces are female,
while colored or textured surfaces are male.

Some english-speaking people I've discussed this with have no association. Other people I've discussed this with who have the same association usually have different association. One person who spoke english *and* spanish (a language with gender built in) had much stronger reactions than I did. Note that the association doesn't seem to have anything to with shape, order, or similarity. I really think this is because the neurons that are responsible for recognizing those shapes are stimulating the neurons responsible for recognizing face and body shapes.

Re:Similiar Association - Gender

[bomb_number_20]

Prepare to mod me down for failure to maintain a coherent thought, but I was struck with some off-the-top-of-my-head observations on your choices...

Focusing on the numbers, I noticed your associations for women tend towards shapes that are made up of curved figures. The shapes for men are mostly angular with the exception of 0. Incidentally, I also noticed you chose 'O' as a male letter too.

With the letters, the choices for men seem very 'linear'. That is, most of them can be drawn in a single stroke (with the exceptions of D, H, T) where the female associations are more complex and require 2 strokes or more (excepting I and S).

With the colors, the choices for women are generally softer mixtures of 'pure' colors while the male associations are strong 'clean' colors.

Long story short, what i get out of this is that we perceive:

(a) women as subtle, complex and 'circular thinking'
(b) men as strong, simple and 'linear thinking' beings.

Don't ask how I got the 'thinking' part out of that.

My thing is that I see everything as heavy outlines and color planes. When I look at something, lines and curves jump out of it and define it's borders, and colors are broken down into simple color planes- with the end result that I kind of see the world in a sort of comic book art kind of way (and no- i don't do drugs).

But, to get to my point, I wonder how much of this is cultural or societal as well? Think about how the world would look if architects were primarily women. We'd probably have lots of round buildings and domes that, on a very subtle level, would cause us to think and percieve in radically different ways.

Re: also see Mind of a Mnnemist by Luria

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I've heard that is a very good book. However that conclusion sounds pretty unlikely. There are many synesthetes who don't have amazing memories and if it were that simple people who learn from multimedia CDROMs would remember more than those who read :-)

Time Magazine

[David Topping]

Time Magazine actually had an article about a year ago, and this has always fascinated me. It's just an incredible deviation from normalcy.

You're GLAD?

[The Pi-Guy]

Some people would give a lot to be able to see things this way. From what I've heard, it's absolutely amazing.

--j

Re:If someone's planning on making a DivX... OT

[morgajel]

same thing here, I taste and hear colors.
nothing like being half asleep in a meijers parking lot with your girlfriend, and saying, "that van looks like it tastes good," pointing at a bright red van.

boy did I get a weird look.

oh well. btw, npr did a couple of stories on this a few years back, that's when I found out that's what I had. try checking their archives to find the story.