Synesthesia, a word derived from the Greek term meaning "unity of the senses," is a neurological condition that involves perceiving multiple forms of sensory information from one sensory input, such as "hearing colors" or "tasting sounds." Though only extant in a tiny portion of the whole human population, its influence upon the arts has been considerable, and this influence has increased exponentially as more accessible and powerful technological means have offered more convincing portrayals of the synesthetic state. Meanwhile, an uptick in the amount of serious neurological research on the subject has raised questions about the essentiality of synesthesia to the evolution of the human species, causing many to understand the synesthetic condition as a vestigial remnant that could sufficiently explain the development of all human expression. Unsurprisingly, synesthetic research has become one of the more reliable points of collaboration between artistic and scientific disciplines.
The discrepancy between artistic / idealistic interpretations of synesthetic phenomena and clinical synesthetes' phenomenological understanding of the world makes for an interesting friction, and for a state in which most "synesthetic" artworks do in fact fail to accurately simulate the condition of synesthesia. However, the failures to create an intellectually rigorous form of synesthetic art are still thoroughly investigated here, since both the artworks and the motivations behind them often point to a passion for reconciliation, e.g. between rational and irrational modes of thought. This book aims not to be a textbook on synesthesia proper, but a catalog of the different ways in which synesthesia has been used as either a metaphor for, or enabler of, a broader synthesis. From Richard Wagner to Iannis Xenakis, from the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk to computerized instruments that interpret graphic data as sound, more of the radical creativity of the modern age has been bound up with synesthetic inspiration than is often realized.
Like TBWB's previous two volumes before it, To Hear The World With New Eyes aims to provide one of the most accessible English-language overviews of its subject. The first edition, graced with a handsome design and layout by regular collaborator Susana Lopez, features over 300 pages of information-rich material along with a complete bibliography and index.
Author(s): Francisco Lopez
Edition: 1
Publisher: Puertas de Castilla / SONM
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 348
City: Murcia
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Introduction: Synesthesia, The Universal Anomaly
Dance of the Senses
Re-shifting the ‘Gravity of Experience’
Unity and Universality
Synesthesia and Technology
The Morality of Synesthesia
Chapter 1: What is a Synesthete (And Why Do They Matter)?
Characteristics of synesthesia
Research Developments and Tests of Authenticity
Links to the Past
The synesthete: ideal or outcast?
Persistence of Vision
Chapter 2:
An Inventory of Sensory Asymmetry
The challenge to duality
The Beginning of “The Word”
Quarrel of the Senses: Visuocentrism and Beyond
Further campaigns against visuocentrism
In Touch with Reality
The “Lesser” Senses Re-considered
The Case for Incongruity?
Chapter 3: Archaic Techniques of Synesthesia?
Sensory unity in the shaman’s quest
“The Blood of an Old, Old Thing”
Eastern Perspectives
The ‘Five Agents’ in Chinese Natural Philosophy
Ancient to the Future
Chapter 4:
The Sensorium in the Transition to Modernity
Status of the Medieval Artist...
… and Status of the Senses
Evolution of the Sensus Communis
Guido d’Arezzo’s Musical Mnemonics
The Renaissance and the Uomo Universale
Origins of Opera
Perspectival and Optical Advances
“A Green Thought” - Naturalist Undercurrents
The affinities of Isaac Newton
Chladni’s Klangfiguren: From Enlightenment to Acoustic Revelation
Chapter 5:
The Flowers of Romance:or, the Rise of the Gesamtkunstwerk
Aspiring to the condition of music: Schopenhauer’s
lasting contributions
The Aesthetic Influence of Schopenhauer
“Artwork
Can Only Gather the Community If It Also Gathers the Arts ”
Nietzsche (and others) contra Wagner
Wagner contra the sciences?
A Word on the ‘Wagnerites,’ and the Legacy of
Romanticism
Chapter 6:
Thieves of Fire -Symbolism’s Art of Correspondences
What Was Symbolism?
Resurgent Romanticism?
Prometheus Rising
The Scent of Failure? The Case of Roinard’s Song of Songs
The Last Promethean:
Aleksandr Scriabin and Russian Symbolism
Blue Roses in Bloom
The Mysterium
A Legacy of Ecstasy
Chapter 7: “Color is the Keyboard of the Soul”:
Synesthesia in the Formation of Abstract Art
Higher Than the Truth?
Astral Bodies and Thought Forms
Unnatural History
The Blue Rider Movement
Der Gelbe Klange
Paul Klee - “Oneness” with Color
Revolutions, Internal and External
Chapter 8: Enthusiasm!
Cross- Modal Experiments in the Soviet Era
Novie Byt
A Slap In The Face
“There Will Be No End! We Are Striking the Universe…”
Trans-Sense Language
Synesthesia in ‘Socialist Cinema’?
Decline of the Avant-garde
Chapter 9: Other Cinema: From Kinetic Painting
to Concrete Film
The Challenge of Synchromy
Behind the Flicker
Music or Not? The Dawn of Lumia
Lumia vs. Nourathar
Abstraction and Absolutism
Notes in the Margins: Synthetic Sound
Chapter 10: Towards Reality Itself:
On Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis
“All Impressions Are Transformed into Music Within Me”:The Case of Olivier Messiaen
A Note on Messiaen’s Bi-directional Synesthesia
Messiaen’s Legacy
Frozen Music / Visible Glissandi
X-altation
Xenakis and UPIC: at the drawing table of the future
“The True Festival of the Imaginary ”
Chapter 11:
Beyond “Multi -media”, Against Desensitization: The New State of the Cross-Modal Arts
The Audio-Visual as “Material ”
How synesthetic is “interactive multi -media?”
MTV: False Dawn of Cross-Modal Art
Modern Graphic Representations of Sound
Chladni Revisited
Towards the end of desensitization
Epilogue
Bibliography / works cited
Index of Subjects
