Just add senses and stir!

Today being 7/8/09, someone posted a joke on a forum I was reading:

"Why is 10 afraid of 7?"

"Because 7 ate 9." (7-8-9. Ha ha. Whatever.)



...Is anyone else just a little disturbed by that? The personalities my syn assigns both 7 and 9 are rather unpleasant, so 10 being afraid of both or either makes far too much sense. I know it's just a pun, but....

He's finally finished. Introducing Sunday!

Sunday by *artisjustfrozenmusic on deviantART If Sunday was a person this is what he would look like. Sunday is male and a dark stormy grey. He's troubled, angry and a serious insomniac. Sunday is too wrapped up in his own problems to think about anyone but himself. He is the itchy anticipation before a big storm and the voices that keep me awake in the night. I am immensely proud of how he turned out. I wanted him dark but light, and smooth but edgy. I hope I got there. His nose and mouth are my favourite part, and the bits that took the longest. What do you think of him?

Hi! I was wondering if anyone could give me their opinion, Do you think I have synaesthesia or not? When I listen to  songs sometimes little colered sphere like dots appear, but other songs create a visual "scene" in my  mind. It really depends on the music type.  Another thing I noticed is when someone makes me laugh really hard, so hard that I can barely breathe small grey squiggles appear in my peripheral vision. Is This synesthesia? I talked to some of my friends, and they have no idea what I am talking about.

Please give your opinion, I will respond in more detail if anyone has questions. 

I've finally gotten back into painting!

Here is Saturday!


Saturday by *artisjustfrozenmusic on deviantART

Also, I've joined a great website! Tokoni - It's a hub where you can upload your personal stories and accounts. It's so fun!

Here is my personal account of my synesthesia from childhood to now. Are my experiences similar to yours? I would love to here them.


Love and art!

xo C

in short: i think i can feel music...

in full: i have always been a "texture person". for instance, there are certain foods such as shrimp where i like the taste but refuse to eat it because of the texture is disgusting.

but today i had an odd experience. i was in the car with a friend listening to music. we were talking about bands and i brought up Animal Collective. i told him they are my absolute favorite band because i love the texture of their music, and he had no idea what i was talking about.

i was trying to describe to him exactly what i mean by "texture" and to be honest, i couldn't. he put on a song i hadn't heard before, "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor and asked me to tell him what the texture was or felt like. i had a hard time putting it into words. the only words i could find that matched what i felt was "it's flat, but not like table flat, like a river flat."  i showed him with my hands what i meant.

(of course i just looked up the song on iTunes and listened to it through nice headphones instead of old car speakers and i heard more than i could in the car. its not flat.)

and i just cant stop thinking about it. i've heard of synaesthetia before (my last band director saw colors when he heard music. he could tell when people didn't play their part perfectly in time because he could visually see their sound was lining up with others) but i never thought that feeling texture when i hear music could be synaesthetia

the reason i've never thought about this is because i dont physically feel the texture on my skin, i feel it in my mind. but i dont have to search for it. i mean, i dont have to think "how does this feel?" i just know. but its almost impossible for me to put the texture in just words. at the least, i would need a pencil and paper to draw it.

because i can't just say "this song feel like gravel," or "this section feel like silk and grass" it makes me think i'm just over thinking this. but i think it is weird that i focus so much on musical texture. i just took an AP Music Theory course. we would have to listen to a short excerpt of a piece and then identify chord progressions, but i'm so focused on the texture of the music it was really, really difficult for me to listen to the progression. texture is the first thing i automatically focus on.

so....what do you think?

Was talking to my husband last night about research he has done about types of brain injuries for a book he is writing and it got me thinking...

There are several types of injuries to the brain that can affect, or even destroy a sense... eg: losing ones sight. The nerves are still there and working, however the part of the brain that handled it no longer functions as it should (they eyes are fine, there is signal along the optic nerve, but the visual cortex is damaged).

My question is: Is anyone aware of any studies (or even anecdotal "data") where a person with pre-existing syn would continue to get the response, even when the brain is damaged in a why that should make it impossible?

To continue my example: If a person has sound->sight, and through stroke or injury damages their visual centers of the brain... would they continue to get a sound->sight response?

Question 2: Would a person being syn assist in the recovery process? Would having a brain where sound often bleeds over into sight help their brain adapt to injury better? IE: part of the auditory cortex taking over for the injured visual cortex?

Interesting!


Aleatory Compositions by Hoagy houghton

"...in his project, 10 people were given a grid, 8 coloured pens and some time to go colour. notes are allocated colours, and the grid is transformed into graphical notation..."

Some of you may remember the synesthetic plot bunny I had a while ago. My mind ran with it for a bit, but I guess I never posted it in this community.

So, have a ( scene snippet )

So I came across this group quite by accident. I never found it when was looking for some odd reason. Anyhoo... my main syn (which I have yet to meet another person like this) is word -> sound/tones... ie I hear words I read as music and sometimes sound effect type noises. Like I hear the word in my head but it's blended in with the sounds/music.

I also have texture and colour to some of my numbers (internal for the colour, projected for the textures). I hate 7 because of this... it's both an ugly green and prickly to me. I like 3s and 4s since 3's are butter yellow and warm, and 4's are pink and fuzzy.

I'm also an artist. A quick read through makes me notice a lot of people are. Is there a correlation between creativity and syn?

Hi everyone, If you are a synaesthete, particularly within a manageable distance to New York City I'd love to talk to you.
Especially interested in anyone who has had experiences related to Music. Either Listening or performing.
Best Wishes,
Gavin Coleman
gavin.coleman@gmail.com
 

I don't know about you, but this game sends my brain into overdrive. The sound coupled with the visuals just make want to squeal with delight.

Click if you've got facebook.

www.facebook.com/apps/application.php

So I was googling for drawings of sounds, because I've never met another synaesthete who can see sound and I wanted to know how sound looks like to other people.

I didn't find much, but I did find this picture:


And this picture makes total sense to me, even though I've never heard of the song drawn here. I was expecting to find a picture and be all "aww man, this looks like nothing I experience" but this picture is like the most logical thing I've seen in my life.

Does this picture make sense to anyone else? I'm curious about this now.

People with grapheme-colour syn: does shape seem to affect anything?
For example, my Es are soft and misty grey-blue, as are my 3s. My A and 4 = light yellow, B and 8 = dark purple (8 is more red-purple though), S and 5 = variations of salmon-red, T and 7 are both dark green. It's almost as though I could map out my colour associations based on spatial arrangement of the letter-shape. Anyone else get similar shape -> similar colour?

I had never heard of synaesthesia until last November or so. My brother caught something on tv about it and realized he's...got it? He does it? Whatever. Anyway, he told my mom about it on the phone, and it turns out she does it, too. And then Mom and I were talking, and it's something I do, too, but none of us ever knew anyone else did. That is, we all three associate genders and personalities to numbers. My grandmother suggested we all see shrinks about it, but we declined. My husband thinks I'm a bit nuts for it, too, but more in an amused sort of way.

If I think about it, associations immediately come to mind for pretty much any number or letter, months, days of the week, and so on, but the strongest associations for me are the alphabet and numbers 1-20. I more faintly associate colors and other sensations with these letters and numbers. This brings me to a question.

For those of you that very strongly associate colors with numbers and letters...do you actually see the color in front of you, on the screen or page, or it more of an in-your-imagination sort of "see"? Because I do not really see the colors I associate with letters and numbers, but that's possibly because that's not a strong part of the object, for me.

I do, however, strongly associate colors with people. For example, my best friend is usually a mixture of a soft, mossy green the texture of particularly fuzzy suede, and red that's like a splash of wet paint or a smear of red lipstick. There's sometimes also brown like chocolate syrup (milk chocolate, not dark). These sort of color patterns change with a person's mood, and the sort of "swatch" I can sense is larger and more detailed the better I know the person. I don't see these without looking for them, though, and I get a headache if I spend too long at it at a time. I'm not sure if all this is part of synesthesia or not.

Anyway, that's my experience thus far. I'm starting to read up on different forms of synesthesia and came across this community, so here I am. Hi.

I don't know what type of synesthesia have. I experience quite complex abstract and usually colourful images with whole words, mostly boys names, and vocabulary to do with geography...
Like Population=multicoloured dots, almost like static and fuzz but more wide and yellow. 
Some words also include movement. I can't seem to find anyone else with this experience
 
I found out I had synaesthesia after my whole year at school took a test for scientific research at imperial college london, and me and a couple of people kept getting regular call backs to retake, and then it was just me and one other girl who had a personality for every letter of the alphabet and numbers up till 64 (who she said was lairy and snide :@ !!)

The test only asked for one colour per name, however I don't JUST get colours on thier own. Mostly it's abstract images with consideration for light, texture and sometimes movement which I usually cannot recreate accuratley, though I try to paint what I experience. Some that are more structural include
Simon = 3 red triangles, one bigger in the middle and one on the left moves slightly to the right at its tip, behind them is soft white and edges are organically rough.
Abdulah= mustard like wonky egg shape, grainy, with a wiggly purple line through the egg, and its cloudy.
Some are less structured
Dexter would be a nightmare to paint,despite the stillness,can't do it, looks like flattened rain in a gradient of violet blues and yellows
blah blah blah ..          well done if you read all of that
Anyway , can anyone tell me if this counts as grapheme-colour synesthesia ?

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,1271606,00.html

Hi all,

I joined this community today after discovering what synesthesia was, which made me think that maybe I've got a mild form of it. Although I'm not too sure...

Basically, I associate colors with letters, words, and people. It's not actually in my visual field, its just more of a feeling. But it's constant. The number 8 is purple, but the word "eight" is brown, because E is a brown letter to me. The number 7 is green and 5 is blue. The month of March is violety-pink, but the word itself is sea-foam green. But like I said, it's more of just a constant feeling of perception. Honestly, I feel sortof crazy even trying to explain it. Music is somewhat similar, the tempo of a song and the pitch of the notes will affect the colors that I feel. Generally, faster paced, upbeat songs are orange-yellow, while waltzy songs tend to be royal purple, and slow, sappy songs are red and blue.

So what do you guys think? Have any of you ever exerienced just simply "feeling" a color, or is it usually in your visual field, or, as the lecturer put it, "seen on the inside of your forehead"? Or am I just reaching for an answer because I attended the talk today and have put the idea of synesthesia into my head?

Also, for those of you synesthetes, do you have learning disabilities or dyslexia, or OCD? I often find that objects (or letters) can only be organized together if the colors that I feel from them match. This causes me to take forever when completing work because i'm often distracted by my "feelings" or compulsion to organize what's going through my brain. Are you hopeless at math and receiving directions? Cause I am. 

I would love to hear from you all about your experiences and if anybody feels anything similar to me.

I have your basic ol' grapheme-colour synaesthesia.

When I hear someone try to tell me a house number or phone number to write down, and say, for example, "9334" as "nine - double three - four", the "double-something" part confuses me. People here in Australia seem to shorten numbers like this all the time when they speak, and I actually have to pause and think when writing numbers like this down - I start thinking of the colours of the word "double" instead of the phone number I'm supposed to be writing! It's like a speedbump on the road, I have to slow down and think about it to put the numbers back in order. My husband says that shortening numbers this way is supposed to make life easier - for everyone but synaesthetes? :)

Actually come to think of it, even the famous "double-oh-seven" of James Bond does that to me, but I've seen the "007" often enough in culture that it's the only use of the "double-number" phrase that no longer bugs me to no end.

Does this happen to anyone else?

After having read Frances Yates' classic The Art of Memory, Mary Carruthers' various books on the subject of the medieval art, and other books on mnemonics, I am delighted to find the following bit in a book on the subject of knitting socks:

"Which row am I on? The latest brain research (done while I am knitting) reveals that the brain stores numbers in one dinky drawer with holes in the bottom, while sensory images get a spacious guest room with sauna. Try this: Replace the numbers one through ten with images saturated with as many [of] the senses as possible. For instance, imagine one slice of green-skinned, juice-dripping, tangy Pippin apple and two newborn robins peeping and tottering in a nest littered with broken blue eggshells, the smell of raw eggs perfuming the air. Use these if you like, but then come up with your own ideas, for you will remember them best if they arise from you. Once you have vivid sensory images for thenumbers from one to ten, rehearse them until they are second nature. Then, when you are knitting eight rows or rounds and want to remember which one you are on, conjure up the sensory imae for one while knitting the first one. Conjure up the image for two for the second round, and so on. The sensory images will root temporarily in your consciousness, for they are rich with meaning, unlike numbers which vanish because of being so generic. If you need to go beyond ten, combine an additional sensory image with the others to mark the decade: hot sun for teens, full moon for 20's, rain for 30's, etc. There is no limit to this kind of sensory place-holding!

All this intense mental imagination menas that you are generating thousands of new dendrite fingers in your brain, which means that more and more connections are being made and you are becoming smarter while you knit. I'm not making this up, it's true." --Cat Bordhi Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles: a Manual of Elegant Knitting Techniques and Patterns
http://al-qhadhulu.livejournal.com/690637.htm

As a ham radio operator, I'm curious as to whether anyone has a syn with Morse Code -- either when they read it visually or hear it or otherwise. I myself don't, but am still curious about this with others.