INTRODUCTION

Color Me Synesthesia

S ynesthesia is a brain anomaly in which the real information of one

sense is accompanied by the perception—regarded by the synesthete as real—of an-
other sense. I believe that this condition is similar to the phenomenon of absolute pitch
[1] in that some people are born with it, while others can be trained to acquire it in a
lesser form, such as relative pitch [2]. Perhaps it is possible to forge connections in the
brain between sight and sound, or between smell and sound, by consciously making
such associations, with imagination thus becoming the precursor of reality. I believe
from my own experience that this can happen. I have experienced such associations my-
self, having developed over the years syncretic relations between color and musical tim-
bre, between tonality and vowel sound, and between landscape or architectural forms
and musical structure. It is now easy and natural for me to see sonic forms [3].
There is a long history of experimentation with synesthesia in the scientific testing
of physical phenomena and in the creation of complex systems of equivalences that
have been logically and structurally worked out. Eye music, or Augenmusik, was a prac-
tice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which some compositions were no-
tated in a way to visually convey certain qualities of the music. For instance, notes
would be blackened to express a feeling of grief or lamentation, as well as to indicate
individual words such as “night” and “dark.”
Since the late nineteenth century, fascination with synesthesia has resulted in some
imaginative ways of exploring the phenomenon. These include the color organs of
the late nineteenth century and the works of composers and visual artists Scriabin,
Messiaen, Schoenberg, Kandinsky and Klee [4]. (The phenomenon is discussed at
length by Crétien van Campen and Greta Berman in the first two articles presented in
this issue as part of Leonardo’s ongoing special section on synesthesia.)
Now at the end of the twentieth century, we find ourselves deep in a flurry of synes-
thetic activity. The Internet has multiple Web sites devoted to the subject, in part due
to the concept of intermedia, named and defined by noted Fluxus artist and thinker
Dick Higgins. Intermedia and multimedia are completely different concepts, although
intermedia can be included in a multimedia environment. In multimedia, content is
presented in more than one medium simultaneously, while intermedia combines
structural elements or syntax from different media into one.
Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate is a stellar example of intermedia in that it takes structural
characteristics from two different realms: sound poetry and music. Its vocabulary is
composed completely of German phonemes, but its overall structure comes from the
sonata form of the nineteenth century. The version of the score of Ursonate published
in Schwitters’s magazine Merz 24 (1932), in which the lyrics were placed in visual
poem format by noted typographer and graphic designer Jan Tschichold, operates
within the concerns of visual art. One cannot take the musical structure out of the
poem in Ursonate because musical structure is the syntax. One experiences the same
phenomenon in synesthesia: Information gathered by one sense creates an experi-
ence in another through the transfer of that information.
The idea of intermedia has become a lively issue in our own time, especially because
computers make this kind of interaction easy to perform. Programmers actively de-
velop software that causes interaction between sound and image. Whether or not an

© 1999 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 7–8, 1999 7

 artist uses a computer to enter the world of interaction between different senses does
not matter, for many artists have been influenced by information theory. For in-
stance, process-oriented conceptual artists often achieve a rich complexity through
the use of disciplines outside of the art world. In order to accomplish this they must
pay extraordinary attention to detailed layers of information while rendering them
in another environment. This specific way of thinking lends itself well to the realiza-
tion of a concept or value indigenous to one language (or sense) in a different lan-
guage (or sense). I believe this is one reason metaphorical synesthesia has estab-
lished such a strong presence in today’s creative world.
Leonardo invites artists and theorists to send in papers on the subject of art and syn-
esthesia, either as explorations of natural-born synesthetes or as views of humanmade
synesthesia in which equivalences between different media have been carefully calcu-
lated. The second category is what I have referred to as “metaphorical synesthesia,”
but one might also call it “relative synesthesia,” or perhaps even “artificial synesthe-
sia.” Through this ongoing special section we hope to uncover much thought in this
area, as well as creative results [5].
JACK OX
Leonardo Editorial Advisor

References and Notes

1. Absolute pitch is the ability of a person to recognize or sing a specific musical note independent of context. This ability is
usually innate.

2. Relative pitch is the ability to recognize specific intervals or to notate music by ear alone, but not independent of context; it
is a fundamental ability required of a musician. Relative pitch can be learned.

3. For information on the author’s system of equivalences between sight and sound, see Jack Ox with Peter Frank, “The Sys-
temic Translation of Musical Compositions into Paintings,” Leonardo 17, No. 3 (1984) and Jack Ox, “Creating a Visual Transla-
tion of Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate,” Leonardo Music Journal 3 (1993) pp. 59–61.

4. Past Leonardo articles on the topic of synesthesia include: A. Wells, “Music and Visual Color: A Proposed Correlation,”
Leonardo 13, No. 2, 100–107 (1980); B. McClean, “Composition with Sound and Light,” Leonardo Music Journal 2 (1992) pp. 19–
22; S. Niederer, “Dreiklang: Word, Sound, Image,” Leonardo 30, No. 3, 207–211 (1997); P.B. Ivanov, “A Hierarchical Theory of
Aesthetic Perception: Scales in the Visual Arts,” Leonardo Music Journal 5 (1995) pp. 49–55; G. Young, J. Bancroft and M.
Sanderson, “Musi-tecture: Seeking Useful Correlations between Music and Architecture,” Leonardo Music Journal 3 (1993) pp.
39–43; B. Burgmer, “Chromatic Notation of Music: Transforming Bach and Webern into Color and Light,” Leonardo Music Jour-
nal 5 (1995) pp. 5–10.
5. Send proposals to the Leonardo Editorial Office via E-mail to <isast@sfsu.edu>. See the Call for Papers on the topic of synes-
thesia in this issue.

8 Introduction