synesthesia

Artwork that is representative of the experiences of people with various types of synesthesia has existed for many centuries. The concepts of seeing music and hearing sounds was studied by Greek philosophers back before anyone had any notions of specific brain functions. Even before this phenomenon was studied or thought of as a concept, painters and musicians put forth an effort to cross the visual and auditory sensations. Kandinsky, among many others, painted music and many of "colored organs" were created to show this same relationship. The film medium is the next logical step. Direct film manipulation is a great way for people to be able to show music as sound, or numbers with personality, because there are so many different ways to manipulate the medium and there are no rules to what one can create. I wonder if synesthesia had any relation to some of the films i have seen in the past. I remember seeing numbers in many experimental films, and they are always colored. If a film maker is a grapheme - color synesthete they might show the letter four colored in red, or they might color it something else to trick people. For me direct film manipulation would be a really neat way to represent music visually. I would work on doing this if i knew how to sync a sound track to the actual film strip to where I was able to hear the music while I was making the movie and know which frame was associated with each measure. Transforming, moving, color changing shapes could be created to show the different feelings certain melodies and instruments inspire. One could also represent the rhythms in music through the movement of such shapes. Another way to think about it is like the photographer in the arts in synesthesia article who takes photographs when she has synesthetic experiences. Just sort go with your guts, do art for the sake of it without putting much conscious thought into it and see what the end result is. I think the next time I’m working on such a project I will listen to music and randomly paint and or scratch to film without any sort of plan. An interesting experiment would be to put multiple people in a room with the same set of materials to manipulate a film strip, play music, and see if there are any common trends in what they come up with. Come to think of it, most experimental films I have seen have made me think of the artists’ efforts to visually show music, at least the ones involving direct film manipulation and animations. Its interesting how when I watch a silent work I usually form my own rhythm and or music in my head to accompany what I’m seeing on the screen. I’m also interested in reading Isaac Newton’s study on the relation of sounds and colors, to see if I could make a film based on his theory to see if it’s something that I will like to watch and what effect it would have on other viewers. In the articles it said that maybe one in twenty something people has some sort of synesthesia, perhaps there are many individuals out there that are unaware that their perceptions are any different from that of most others. Maybe the people sitting with me in class watching experimental films are having totally different experiences from me, like when we watched that silent film on the second day of class and people said they were imagining different instruments that should be playing.