In 1980, according to George Washington University neurologist Dr. Richard Cytowic’s name.īut until fairly recently, synesthesia had its share of skeptics. This sculpture by Carol Steen - called Cyto - is her representation of neurologist Dr. In fact, she listens to music when she goes to the art-supply store, carefully removing the paint-tube cap to see if the color matches the sound she’s hearing. Still, not everything she experiences is “synesthetically wonderful.” “I assure you that if I smell something really bad,” she explained, “it’s not anything anyone would want to see.” Steen describes the reaction as an immediate physical response.
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Her abstract painting Full V iew is what she perceived when her acupuncturist removed the needles at the end of a session. “There are times when the vision I have is great and I can’t wait to run home to paint what I’ve seen,” said Steen, who is known for incorporating her synesthesia in her art. A synesthetic one paints what she actually visualizes when hearing a specific concerto - or as Steen explained, what she sees when she feels the jab of a tetanus shot. An “ordinary” painter either captures a landscape before her or something she imagines. And unlike their colleagues, synesthetic artists - those who use their neurological trait as a foundation of their practice - respond intuitively to what Steen calls the “multimedia-like stimuli” going on around them. After all, synesthetes are able to express seemingly unrelated concepts in a variety of mediums: numbers with personalities, colors with pain, moving shapes with sound. According to those who study the condition, cross-sensory experiences may offer a particular artistic advantage: a greater aesthetic sensitivity than the rest of us, and thus a greater likelihood to gravitate toward artistic fields. In fact, a growing body of evidence shows synesthesia is more common among creative types and that some of the most imaginative minds - Hockney, Kandinsky, Nabokov - were indeed synesthetic. These days, so many celebrities seem to be proclaiming their synesthesia, it feels, as best-selling novelist and radio host Kurt Andersen references in one of his Studio 360 podcasts, like a kind of neurological “humblebrag.” Kanye has it. And like most with synesthesia, Steen can’t recall “5” ever being a different hue or not having joined senses. Though her father, also an artist, insisted five was yellow ochre. For Steen, five is cadmium yellow medium. They know it is, and they will “fight to the end” that a number has a certain persona or is a specific shade. Greta Berman, a Juilliard art historian who studies synesthetic artists, explains synesthetes don’t just think 9 is this or that. For a synesthete with “ordinal-linguistic personification,” the number 9 might be a bearded hipster, while someone else swears 9 is a high-ponytailed blonde. For another, eating chocolate-covered raisins causes a sensation in the fingertips. To take examples based on scientific literature, for one synesthete, the sound of a high C on a trumpet induces a flash of Ferrari red. Shapes and sounds can have particular tastes, while letters or numbers can embody distinct personalities and genders. Based on self-reporting and scientific case studies so far, there appear to be 80 varieties of these involuntary sensory perceptions. The word synesthesia means “union of the senses,” and synesthetes - roughly 4 percent of the population - are adults whose senses mingle in a sort of cross-wiring of the brain. A Neuroscientist Patiently Explains the Allure of the Adult Coloring Book
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