Anyone heard of Synesthesia?

[yourauntgussie]

It's a sort of neural cross-wiring. Some people see letters and numbers as having colors *belonging* to them, which can be confusing as a kid -- why did they print the number 8 in purple when it *should* be yellow? etc. That is called "Grapheme/Color" synesthesia.

What I have is "Sound/Color" synesthesia -- all sounds -- random noises, rhythmic noises, and *especially* music give me a light show when I close my eyes that most people have to take controlled substances to witness.

Yeah, it can be cool, but it's also a pain in the neck driving at night -- it's hard to filter the syn colors out sometimes.

Anyway, I need help. I'm not an artist, but I have a good set of colored pencils and decent pan-type watercolors, in the hopes that I could render some of the things I see. But it's hard.

How do you convey the idea that some colors, but not all, have actual depth, texture, and weight?

There are two projects I'd like to work at first. One, is a "still" shot -- It's the opening chord to "A Hard Day's Night." It's a great chord, with an amazing look -- I don't think I've seen it elsewhere, and the fact that it's held for a couple of beats makes it especially vivid.

The other one I'd like to do is to animate Tchaikovksi's "Waltz of the Flowers." Yeah, it's pretty big, but some themes repeat, so some images can be recycled. There is strong evidence that Tchaikovski was a synesthete himself, and composed for color as well as sound.

If this all sounds very Fantasia, there's a reason for that -- some of the Disney animators on that project were synesthetes. Because of that movie and other works, I always thought seeing music was normal until I was 49 years old! Young'uns, that's a long time to be running around with a neuro glitch and not knowing it!

So, I need lotsa help. Should I start with analog materials, then scan the images, or should I create images directly on the computer? If the latter, what app would be most effective/cheapest? How do you link sound/visual files, especially when you *have* to make the movements/rhythms match?

HAAAYYY-UUULP!

your aunt gussie

[radiodark]

Sweet project! I had a classmate in a color theory class that realized she was grapheme/color synasthetic as we talked about it in class.

You might want to look at abstract expressionist Wassily Kandinsky's work if you aren't already familiar with it- he was almost certainly a synesthete and did some very interesting pieces. Especially fond of Wagner, as I recall, and his pieces make a lot of sense to me as visualizations. Example.

As to what media to work in, I guess I'm really only qualified to advise you on the still shot, as I'm a wretched animator. Maybe @test-object can help? He's got a good eye for outside-the-box approaches to animation.

Anyhow for the still shot if I were you I'd probably choose acrylic paint just for the textural options it offers over watercolor, colored pencil, or even digital options. I'm not synesthetic so I'm just judging what's needed from the descriptions I've heard, but I feel like having that extra smidgen of visual depth might give the piece more punch. Pick what feels right for you.

If you'd prefer to work digitally we've got a list of art programs here. Photoshop is the overpriced industry standard that we all put up with since it's so damned good at what it does, and GIMP is its sad cousin that does pretty much all the same things for free, just more awkwardly. I'm super fond of ArtRage- it's affordably priced and imitates traditional media beautifully.

At 9/11/14 03:02 PM, yourauntgussie wrote: How do you convey the idea that some colors, but not all, have actual depth, texture, and weight?

I'd use shading and varying the purity of the color to imply depth. You can give something a physical texture or imply it illusionististically through your markmaking. Weight- the higher a shape is on the picture plane, the heavier it appears to be. The darker it is, the heavier it will appear to be. Geometric shapes appear to be heavier than organic ones. Textured areas are heavier than untextured ones.

I've a tutorial on composition here that might help you think about how you'd like to shape your piece.