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A&O - synesthesia

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second sensorial opinion

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SYNESTHESIA NOTES

Diary note ...Reminiscence ... "So they are going to replace MOMA. ! In the old Museum of Modern Art there was a LUMIA in the basement ... I visited each of the few hundreds days I visited MOMA (studying in the cafe or garden led to many happy encounters) in the 1960's visiting Thomas Wilfred's work ... his light sculptures projected on a screen in a light-sheltered tent. Some computer media players have a version of it ... transforming sound into synchronized colored clouds ... But Wilfred devised the "clavilux" that transformed strokes on a keyboard into projections of light. The psychedelic light shows that accompanied a few favorite musical groups tapped into a deep reservoir of cognitive creativity: the sensory vocabulary of most disciplines find alternative ways of communicating the experience pathetically inadequate: tasters of wine, tea, coffee ... sniffers of colognes ... we have all had experiences that cannot be adequately embraced by any one sensory domain ... there is no vocabulary sufficient, but sometimes more holistic sensory representation - converging senses - feel closer. LUMIA site (retasked for "Starball" in 2012)

|About LUMIA| Thomas Wilfred|

Find out about the novel, rebours... explore the performance theories of gesamtkunstwerk

SYNESTHESIA
"Synesthesia [also synaesthesia] is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. It also has some other interesting features that clearly separate it from artistic fancy or purple prose. Its reality and vividness are what make synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia is also
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A&O - synesthesia

fascinating because logically it should not be a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing separation of function anatomically." (R. Cytowic, wrote:

"Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses" quoted at http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/ ... Dr.Richard Cytowic also

"Some people say they "see red" when angry, or they talk about "sharp" cheese, "cool" jazz, or "loud" ties. But do you see pink triangles on hearing music, or feel yourself on a prickly bed of nails when eating cherry pie? Do ordinary words, names, and voices have specific colors, peculiar shapes--even distinctive flavors? If this sounds perfectly normal, then you may be one of a handful of individuals with synesthesia, the cross-wiring of the senses that is experienced in the first-person not as imagination, but as an external and involuntary sensation. Neurologically, synesthesia involves only the left hemisphere, and relies on limbic structures for its expression. While we usually regard the cortex as the home of sensory perception, there is, during the multisensory synesthetic experience, a counter-intuitive collapse of cortical metabolism, without effecting subjects' higher intelligence or normal behavior. The implications of synesthesia lead to a multiplex model of brain organization that rejects the hierarchical supremacy of neocortex and the usual emphasis on objectivity. This multiplex model stresses limbic regulation, subjective experience, and non-verbal knowledge."

OVERVIEW of SYNESTHESIA by Ramachandran & Brang an account on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=DvwTSEwVBfc Fred Callopy's project described in Leonardoand visit his site: "Rhythmic Light" Large Quirky Collection of Synesthesia Resources
[more]
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A Psyche

Symposium on Synesthesia
Managing Editor: Stephen Jackson . From the abstract of Richard Cytowic's article: Synesthesia (Greek, syn = together + aisthesis = perception) is the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association. That is, the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes a perception in one or more different senses. Its phenomenology clearly distinguishes it from metaphor, literary tropes, sound symbolism, and deliberate artistic contrivances that sometimes employ the term "synesthesia" to describe their multisensory joinings. An unexpected demographic and cognitive constellation co-occurs with synesthesia: females and non-right-handers predominate, the trait is familial, and memory is superior while math and spatial navigation suffer. Synesthesia appears to be a left-hemisphere function that is not cortical in the conventional sense. The hippocampus is critical for its experience. Five clinical features comprise its diagnosis. Synesthesia is "abnormal" only in being statistically rare. It is, in fact, a normal brain process that is prematurely displayed to consciousness in a minority of individuals. Is There a Normal Phase of Synaesthesia in Development? Simon Baron-Cohen Synesthesia: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology Richard E. Cytowic Synesthesia - A Real Phenomenon? Or Real Phenomena?
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Luciano da F. Costa Synesthesia and Method Kevin B. Korb A Synesthesia Experiment: Consciousness of Neural Activity James Schirillo Synaesthesia and Synaesthetic Metaphors Sean Day

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WORKS of ART (such as the Lumia, noted above and below) arguably orchestrate multiple sensory modalities to be integrated in a more complete aesthetic experience:

Compare such ambitions as manifest in gesamtkunstwerk and in how music works with cinema: Music can take control of the image; it can also suggest a world separate from the image, or expose the image as a lie.

excellent points made about Eisensteins view (he worked with Prokofiev). Orson Wells also an example (Bernard Herrmanns music as Rosebud burns in Citizen Kane). Stanley Kubrick (Well meet again in Dr Strangelove).

Most of essay, Sound and Vision by Alex Ross in The New Yorker June 27, 2005, was on recent Sound Projections at Lincoln Center and Philip Glass ensembles work for Godfrey Reggio/ Philip Glass collaborations:
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Koyaanisqatsi (1982; Hopi for life out of balance), Powaqqatsi (2002, life in transformation), and Naqoyqatsi (2008, life as war).

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tp5gxR7D_tw

MODERN INCARNATIONS: DIGITAL LUMIA [George Stadnik's] "Digital Lumia owes its very existence to pure inspiration from seeing the work of the 20th Century Lumia artist, Thomas Wilfred. Mr. Wilfred's compositions were performed in concerts and exhibited as light sculptures throughout the United States and Europe. They were always silent -- visual music. Mr. Wilfred intended that participants interpret the imagery synaesthetically - what the eye saw in the composition, triggered the mind to create the complementary or contrasting sound, flavor, texture or feeling. There was no narrative, as such, although Wilfred's pieces could evoke fantastic landscapes, futuristic cities, elegant gardens or the most primitive, primal moments. [Stadnik's] work builds on that tradition and brings it into a contemporary cultural context to inspire and stimulate each participant to discover and create their own visions, stories and emotions within." -George
Stadnik; from a catalog for an exhibition of his Digital Lumia work, based on that of Thomas Wilfred. Visit his website, The Art of Lumia.

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