[accessibleimage] Re: Paintings really can be heard, scientist says

Hi Sylvie,
Wonderful article! 
The Kadinsky exhibition is still going on at the Tate.
Related article Kadinsky and Synaesthesia ,  on list 13 June.
Best,
Lisa


accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx skrev 15. september 2006 kl. 07:14 +0000:
>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.



Lisa Yayla
Huseby Kompetansesenter 
Oslo Norway
lisa.yayla@xxxxxxxxxx

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