martes, febrero 09, 2010
Sinestesia y porosidad cultural
La sinestesia es una facultad poco común que tienen algunas personas, que consiste en experimentar sensaciones de una modalidad sensorial particular a partir de estímulos de otra modalidad distinta.
Algunos personajes conocidos eran sinestésicos. Así, por ejemplo, Baudelaire, Rimsky-Korsakov o Nabokov experimentaban cierta mezcla de sensaciones de los distintos sentidos.
Se han descrito casos de personas que ven los sonidos de colores, otras a las que ciertas formas le producen olores o sabores particulares, etc. No obstante, la sinestesia se puede producir dentro de una misma modalidad sensorial. Por ejemplo, las letras, los números o las palabras, pueden producir la experiencia subjetiva de colores particulares. De hecho, este último tipo es el más abundante.
El estudio de la sinestesia es muy interesante, tanto desde una perspectiva psicológica como neurocientífica, no sólo como fenómeno interesante en sí mismo, sino como una puerta por la que adentrarnos en el estudio de la percepción, la conciencia, y en la base neural de esos procesos.
Además, las personas sinestésicas suelen tener reacciones emocionales negativas cuando los estímulos, p.ej. una letra, E, o un número, 8, están de un color diferente al que ellas ven en él. De ahí que este fenómeno sea igualmente interesante para el estudio de las emociones.
Por último, en opinión del profesor Ramachandran, un experto en el tema de reconocido prestigio internacional, el estudio de la sinestesia puede llegar a ser muy revelador en las investigaciones sobre la creatividad, y las metáforas. (Departamento de Psicología Experimental,Facultad de Psicología,Universidad de Granada)
http://www.synesthesie.nl/
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinestesia
http://www.synesthesie.nl/publist.htm
http://www.si21.com/interakt/
http://www.olats.org/schoffer/indexe.htm
http://www.synesthesie.com/
http://cityspinning.org/porouscity
http://cityspinning.org/porouscity/inspiration/
OTRAS HISTORIAS DEL NET ART
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2 comentarios:
De: herve pierre lambert
Synesthesia
At first, for
somebody who would think he does not know anything about synesthesia and would
like to read a quick presentation, an article rather than a book, I would like
to recomand an article by Citowic. (1995). “Synesthesia: Phenomenology and
Neuropsychology”. PSYCHE, 2(10) the clearest presentation I ever read on
line.
But
it is more an article dedicated to synesthesia and our theme is more about relations
between arts and synesthesia and about these relations the article is far from
being sufficient. Furthermore, his ideas about Kandinsky as somebody who
practiced experiments of art fusion without being a real synesthete have been
rejected by specialists like Crétien
van Campen in the same PSYCHE, 2(10)., with an article entitled: “ Synesthesia and experimentation” , and like
Amy Ione in an article entitled “Neuroscience, History and the arts,
Synesthesia: is F-Sharp Colored Violet?” Journal of the History of the Neuroscience, 2004.
About relations between arts and synesthesia, since the last year, a new
point was the publication of the latest
book of Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia ,
Tales of Music and the Brain ( 2008). One chapter « The Key of Clear
Green » is dedicated to synesthesia by musical artists.
Oliver
Sacks had not actually written about synesthesia before this book. He had done
it just once, in “The case of the color blind painter” in An anthropologist on Mars but marginally, synesthesia was not the theme
of this tale.
The
scientific writer has an explanation for not having written on synesthesia
before Musicophilia : he was not, as a neurologist, accustomed to meet patients
with synesthesia, for, as he says, people with synesthesia do not go to see a
neurologist. He met even patients for some specific neurological problems who
were synesthet, without mentioning it and just by chance, he discovered the
fact.
The
chapter of the book, dedicated to relations between music and synesthesia, is divided in three parts. In the second one,
Oliver Sacks presents five cases of contemporary synesthete people he met who
are musicians or muscial people. That is the most original part of the chapter.
Oliver Sacks just reminds that in the history of music at least three known
composers , Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Messiaen
made explicit use of their synesthesia in musical compositions. The cases he
speaks of are not the result of treatment as in his other books, but of an
personal enquiry. Let’s share the second part, actually on the subject, and the
first and third ones.
He starts the chapter by a first part about history of
synesthesia where he gives his conception of synesthesia. The third part of the
chapter keeps on developing history of conceptions about synesthesia, history
of its invention as a scientifical object and at the end, Sacks describes some
of the new knowledge about synesthesia, which may compose also a kind of general
introduction to synesthesia.
In the
first part, he reminds the difference between synesthesia as a metaphor and
synesthesia as a physiological phenomenon. As a metaphor, synesthesia has
become an important theme in literature in the XIXe century. Oliver
Sacks considers ETA Hoffmann as one of the first writer, -and indeed he was a
writer and a composer-, to introduce the synesthetic metaphor in literature. He
just mentions as literary uses of synesthesia, Keats, Shelley, Rimbaud, the
French Symbolists and even Huysmans. Huysmans is interesting for his theme,
because he invented a complicated corespondence system between liqueurs and a
musical instrument “ l’orgue à bouche”.
The third
part of the chapter continues the first one, developping what he had just
introduced, the history of scientific interest in synesthesia which for him
starts with Galton, and his Inquiries
into Human Faculty and its Development in 1883. Galton gave synesthesia a
scientific reality but according to Sacks, we had to wait the last third of the
XXe century to get scientific investigation, with two currents, the
english one with Simon Baron-Cohen and John Harrison and the north-american one
with Cytowic. Cytowic’s popular book the Man
Who Tasted Shapes ( 1993) uses some literary recipe similar to those of
Sack’s books. Nothing new in what he says, it is something like a pedagogic
presentation.
He
mentions the pionnner work of Ramachandran and Hubbard for inventing objective
psychological tests for synesthesia, and he refers to the test described in
their 2001 paper in Journal of
Consciousness Studies.
About the
new hypothesis about synesthesia, Sacks is especially interested by Baron-Cohen‘
s idea, i.e that synesthesia corresponds to a normal development of the human
being during the first time of life. How much time last the synesthetic
connections remains open. According to Baron-Cohen, the human being is
synesthete during only the first three months of his life, but more recent
studies would conclude to much more time. The synesthete is a person in whom “a
genetic abnormality prevents complete
deletion of his early hyperconnectivity” (Sacks, 2008: 181) . This abnormality
has an important hereditary factor. Sacks repeats again in a kind of
pedagogical presentation known facts : Synesthesia is considered now as a
normal phenomenon at the beginning of life, an help to survive by recognizing
more rapidly the mother by all the senses. Synesthesia may also return for some
transient times during adult life, during epileptic seizures and under
hallucinogen effects. Sacks reminds also more known facts, at first that
synesthete proportion remains especially uncertain, oscillating according to
different studies between one person in two thousand until one person in
twenty-three. Uncertain also remains the gender difference, although in the
first studies , women looked to be much more afected by synesthesia than men.
Sacks is
especially interested by the relation between synesthesia and blindness. The
loss of vision may lead to increase visual imagery and intersensory
connections. Synesthesia seems to follow blindness so easily, so quickly that
it “suggests instead of release phenomenon, the removal of an inhibition
normally imposed by a fully functionning system” ( 182). The musical synesthesia
provoked by a recent blindness can be so strongly perceived that it is felt
like intrusive, as Sacks described it in “The Mind’s Eye” and Ramachandran in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.
Let’s say that
the real originality of the chapter lies in the presentation of contemporary
musicians or musical persons with synesthesia.
The first
case of synesthesia in musicians is the example of the contemporary composer
Michael Torke whose experienced with coloured music had a strong influence on
his music and life. The sort of synesthesia he has consists in “key
synesthesia” : fixed coulours are associated with the different keys. The
colours which appear spontaneously never changed since his childhood and are
specific: “G minor is ‘ochre’ or ‘gamboge’. D minor is ‘like flint, graphite’.
F minor is ‘earthy, ashy’ (169) . ” He
sees no color when he hears isolated notes. He took advantage of his
synesthetic experience just in his first orchestral music, called Color Music, in which he makes an
explicit use of his key synesthesia.
The second
case is David Caldwell’s, another composer who has a more extent musical
synesthesia. Synesthesia with the keys but with other correspondences than
Michael Torke. As Olivers Sacks notes: “ Every synesthete has his own color
correspondences.” (172) His synesthesia which transform music in color includes
musical themes, patterns, moods. And even particular instruments have synesthetic
colors.
In fact
Sacks’inquiry on David Caldwell is extremly limited, just a page and a half.
There is a second moment in David Caldwell’s study which incorporate a study
done by Swiss researchers, which described a professional musician with both
music color and music-taste synesthesia in a article published in Nature in 2005.
Sacks quickly
flits to a third case, Christine Leahy’s case, a writer, a visual artist and
guitar player. Her synesthesia is especially for letters, numbers, days, and
her musical synestesia is included in this. If she knows or recognizes that a
letter of the musical scale is a D, it will provoke the presence of the color
usually associated with the color of the letter D. It is more a linguistic than
a musical synesthesia.
Forth case,
Patrick Ehlen, a psychologist and songwriter. He has a synesthesia not only
with music but with sounds of all sorts, “ from musical instruments to car
horns, voices, animal voices, thunder”. And he has classic synesthesia to
letters, numbers, days. He discovered that he was a synesthet at the age of
eighteen and his own experiment of synesthesia moved him to become a
psychologist. The presentation of the last case is limited to a large quotation
of Sue B. who see images when hearing music.
So the interest of the chapter is that it
gives information about the current field of the relations between musicians
and synesthesia. It can be considered as an interesting introduction, no much
more. I found also interesting
the site of www.ThereminVOX, A Brief
History of Synaesthesia and Music by Sean A. Day February 21,
2001
HP Lambert
*Synaesthesia Discussion Opening Announcement*
Synaesthesia is a term used to describe the neurological condition where two
sense modalities interact in human perception. Some cases are described as
seeing colours while reading numbers or letters, tasting shapes or listening
to tones while looking at a painting.
A whole genre of visual and media art has been inspired by the concept of
"visual music"; Some experimental curricula have also been developed in art
education in order to study the interrelationship of findings in
synaesthesia research with the study of art and cognition as a broader
discipline. However, very little has been done so far towards the direction
of creating an appropriate social environment for children who share these
extraordinary abilities, in order to help them develop new ways of creative
problem solving and share their experiences of alternative ways of thinking
in general education.
Reports of synaesthetic experiences are considered to have specific patterns
to suggest for identifying abstract narrative structures in specific
artworks. Such reports describe experiences like seeing moving shapes,
forms, and lines interacting with space while listening to music or vice
versa. Art genres, such as intermedia art, visual or kinetic poetry may also
be synaesthetic forms of art, including hybrid art forms that interact with
media performance, space and architecture. An example is the new ARS
ELECTRONICA opening performance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtU3ekW9Nkk
Art historians have already performed research on the synaesthesia case of
certain poets and visual artists, such as Wassily Kandinsky. We also have
descriptions of composers like Oliver Messiaen and Gyorgy Ligetti
that document how they used their synaesthesia to explore and elaborate
their compositions by drawing inspiration from visual forms. Relatively less
is known about abstract artists who experimented with film or other time -
based visual media such as interactive or virtual environments and site
specific installations.
In this discussion we wish to examine and elaborate on a number of specific
questions:
1. How have artists used scientific concepts of synaesthesia in the past?
2. Can a creative environment help synaesthetic children to develop their
abilities?
3. Why is there so little exchange of knowledge on synaesthesia between
artists and scientists?
4. Do artists and scientists speak different languages when it comes to
synaesthesia? Or are they speaking about different subjects/aspects?
Moderator of this discussion is:
Veroniki Korakidou, PhD. Researcher at the University of Athens ,
Communication and Media Department , NT Lab. She holds an MPhil in Cultural
Studies and Human Communication from the University of Athens (2003), an MBA
in Audiovisual and Multimedia Production from the Groupe HE-ICHEC in
Brussels (2001) and a BA in Communication, Media and Culture from Panteion
University in Athens , Greece (2000). She has authored and co-authored a
number of publications in International Conference proceedings, books and
International Journals. As an artist she has participated in film festivals,
workshops and cine/theater productions. She is co-organizer of the
e-MobiLArt 2008-9 Project: www.media.uoa.gr/emobilart and the representative
of Greece to Leonardo Education Forum (LEF) since 2007.
Respondents are:
Cretien van Campen is scientific researcher, author and editor in social
science and fine arts. He is affiliated as a senior researcher at the
Netherlands
Institute for Social Research http://www.scp.nl/english and
moderator of Synesthetics
Netherlands http://www.synesthesie.nl/, the web community of synesthetes
in the Netherlands . He is editor of the Leonardo online bibliography
Synesthesia in Art and
Science http://lbs.mit.edu/isast/spec.projects/synesthesiabib.html.
His latest book is The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and
Science http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11303(MIT
Press 2007). He has published in the fields of the senses,
perception & art http://www.synesthesie.nl/publist.htm and health,
happiness & well-being http://www.scp.nl/zorg/publicaties/publicatiesvanCretienvanC.html.
Jack Ox has been engaged with the visualization of music for 35 years. As
such, her interest in relation to Synesthesia has been well known. She has
also served on the editorial board of Leonardo for 20 years, and co-edited
with Jacques Mandelbroijt, "Synesthesia and Intersenses"(1999-2001). Her
current project is the Gridjam; a multi-media collaboration of music, visual
art, science and technology with Alvin Curran composer, the Del Sol Quartet,
and Anthony Braxton, all playing in different venues around the globe but
appearing together as 3D avatars inside of Ox's and Dave Britton's Virtual
Color Organ, inside the Desert Organ Stop, a 3D group of rock and land
formation that operate as a metaphor for an orchestra, and includes real
time VR visualizations of the music.
http://www.jackox.net/pages/gridjamIndex.html
Hervé-Pierre Lambert: ENS, Agrégation, Docteur es lettres, Centre de
Recherches Littérature et Poétique Comparée. Paris X Nanterre . Latest
papers (selection): « Proust et les neurosciences »,
www.epistemocritique.org , 01/09. « Géographie imaginaire du roman
posthumain de langue française », Etudes francophones, University of
Louisiana , 12/ 08. « Les Manifestes dans le courant de l'imaginaire
posthumain », Revue Itinéraires LTC, Paris XIII, 09/ 08. « Littérature, arts
visuels, neuroesthétique », www.epistemocritique.org 01/08. « Le laboratoire
comme atelier d'artiste », Recherches en esthétique, 12/07. Latest
conferences (selection): 10 /08 Centro Nacional de las Artes , Mexico :
« Bio-art et art cognition en France », « L'imaginaire posthumain : the
french version ». 11/07: « Neuroaesthetics, neurological disorders and
creativity», MutaMorphosis, Prague .
Dr Jamie Ward is an Associate Professor at the University of Sussex, UK. He
has carried out many scientific investigations on all aspects of
synaesthesia which have been published as journal articles. He is the
author of the recently published book: The Frog who Croaked Blue:
Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses. His website is
www.syn.sussex.ac.uk
Elizabeth Seckel is a third year undergraduate student majoring in
physiology and neuroscience at the University of California , San Diego .
She is a research assistant at the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD,
studying under Dr, V. S. Ramachandran, best known for his experiments in
behavioral neuroscience. Elizabeth has also worked as a great escapes
western region intern at Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, helping
seriously ill children cope with their fear and isolation through
entertainment and education, and a production intern for Weapons of Mass
Entertainment, helping to launch a tour that would appeal to young adults.
Elizabeth is also an avid gymnast, trampolinist, and bungee jumper.
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