[accessibleimage] Paintings really can be heard, scientist says

Paintings really can be heard, scientist says

September 7, 2006

Courtesy University College London and World Science staff

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060907_synaesthesia.htm

The Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky wasn't talking nonsense when he claimed
his paintings could be heard, a scientist said: In fact, we all link sound
and color subconsciously, and follow consistent patterns in doing so. A tiny
percentage of people is consciously aware of the crossover of senses in our
brains, said Jamie Ward of University College London, speaking at the
British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival of Science in
Norwich, U.K. this week. These people, known as synaesthetes, have a rare
condition in which the senses mingle. It doesn't happen necessarily only
with sound and color. The most bizarre forms of synaesthesia have been
reported. A study in the August 22 issue of the research journal
Consciousness and Cognition found that some people link time and space: one
person experienced December as a red area located at arm's length to the
left of their body. Ward's studies focused on the better known color-sound
linkage of which Kandinsky spoke. His results show that most of us prefer
image and sound combined, rather than either in isolation, Ward said. We
also tend to agree on which images match particular sounds. This could have
implications for how we understand art and develop art forms that combine
visual images with sound-such as ballet, opera, visual jockeying and
animation. Kandinsky, who lived from 1866 to 1944, "wanted to make visual
art more like music-more abstract," Ward said. "He also hoped that his
paintings would be 'heard' by his audiences. This seems more achievable now
that we have found such a strong link between vision and hearing. "Although
information from the world enters our heads via different sensory organs-the
eyes and ears in this instance-once they are in the brain they are
intimately connected with each other. Impressively, they are connected in
non-random ways, so that some combinations of sound and vision go together
better than others." During a series of experiments, Ward said he asked six
synaesthetes to draw and describe their visual experiences of music played
by the New London Orchestra. A control group of six people without the
condition were asked to do the same. Animated films, combining the music and
drawn images were created by an animator, Sam Moore of the University of
Wolverhampton, and shown to the public visiting London's Science Museum.
Also, 100 images were shown to over 200 people. They were asked to choose
the image that provided the best fit to the music. Respondents consistently
chose the images drawn by synaesthetes over control images, Ward reported.
This shows that while people without synaesthesia are not able to hear a
painting or see a piece of music in a literal sense, they are able to sense
the crossover and tend to choose the 'correct' image. "While some
synaesthetes can actually hear a Kandinsky in a very real way, the rest of
us don't have such a pronounced crossover of senses. But, this research
shows that all of us have links between our hearing and vision-even if we
don't really realise it," he said. That's not to say that synaesthetes hear
precisely the same sounds in "listening" to a Kandinsky painting. Describing
the artist's "Composition VIII, 1923," Ward reported, one synaesthete said:
"The jumbled mass of lines gave various tones, which changed as my eyes
travelled round the picture. When looking at the large multicoloured
powerful circle at upper left, I get a pure tone which can be too much, so
to relieve my mind of this I travel back to the cacophony of jumbled lines
and shapes. This painting therefore is a good balance of contrasting
noise-pure tones and cacophony-which was a delight to see." Another
synaesthete described it as follows: "There is a huge splurge of sound
left-hand top-booming and vulgar! Below it is a mousy little meee sound
which then translates into 'oh's and 'ah's and pops at the various circles.
The lines are sharp and are moving to the right with the sound of steel-like
blades scraping against one another. The triangle and boomerang shape are
surprised and pop up laughing with a 'whooo'." The next stage of the
research will use brain scans to monitor the brains of synaesthetes when
Kandinsky triggers sound or when sound triggers a Kandinsky-like vision,
Ward said.

Other related posts: