Synesthesia and Creativity

Biological neccessity/survival pressures, the socialization process, practical considerations, etc. require us to separate/categorize sense perception into five different categories: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. But occassionally there are individuals who fail to do this in various ways. The reasons are still not completely understood. Synesthesia, as this sensory mixing is called, integrates sensual experience into a greater whole. Besides the cases where it is inborn, certain drugs, meditation, deep concentration, sensory deprivation, strokes, epileptic seizures, and blindness or deafness can all cause the phenomenon.

Recently, a new term, "ideasthesia", has been introduced to encompass those other phenomena like "grapheme-color synesthesia", in which letters and/or numbers are perceived in color. With this variation, people either visually project the color onto the letter or number or just hold a mental association between the color and the letter or number. I happen to have this type. There is also the more unusual "linguistic personification", in which numbers, days of the week, and months of the year evoke personalities. A particularly rare form is called "lexical-gustatory synesthesia", in which words and sounds convey different tastes to the person. This form has been found to be influenced by childhood food experiences. Synesthesia is often reported as enhancing memory, through association. In this way, it can help to integrate early memories.

Perhaps the most well-known instances of synesthesia appear in the creative arts, with it being especially noticeable in poetry, i.e., in the form of cross-sensory metaphors. In the visual arts, Kandinsky was a synesthete who tried to express a combination of color, hearing, touch, and smell in his paintings. To a lesser degree, Georgia O'Keefe was also, as she used titles like "Music - Pink and Blue". Mondrian, althought not a synesthete, tried to evoke the phenomena through his associations of images with music. Many musicians, such as Elington, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Syd Barrett (founder of Pink Floyd) were all thought to have synesthesia, whereas poets such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire wrote about synesthesia but were not proven to be actual synesthetes.

It's interesting to think about the ways we visual artists can cultivate synesthesia for the purpose of enhancing our artwork. Maybe we should start thinking in terms like "What color would smell good today?" or "What image do my taste buds crave?"