Synesthesia and Cymatics

Today we’re talking about cross sensory experience.  It is possible for some people to see sound or for words and numbers to have colors and shapes automatically. This is called synesthesia. I first heard about synesthesia in a introductory psychology class my first semester of college. I thought it was one of the most interesting currently known conditions. It’s pretty cool in that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t impede life in a way that we think most psychological and physiological conditions do. In fact, much of the time it does quite the opposite. I was watching a TED Talks by a man named Daniel Tammet, a high functioning autistic also known as a savant.  He demonstrated that his synesthesic condition allowed him a different way of looking at things as he was able to see different words and numbers visually.  For example, he was able to do a pretty complex math problem in his head because the visualized the numbers as squares.  His synesthesia also highlighted alliteration for him.  This condition isn’t so much of a detriment or an oddity than a different way of looking at the world.  In some ways, it makes me sad that I don’t have synesthesia and can’t experience the world in this way. Speaking of combining different senses, I also watched a TED talks on cymatics a process by which sound is visualized through shapes. It’s a kind of practical, do-it-yourself synesthesia.  The applications for both art and science are immense. It was really cool how higher pitches make more complex patterns. Cymatics of music itself look so cool. Also, the fact that they are using it to decode dolphin linguistics is really awesome. This was the first time I had ever heard of cymatics but now I definitely will be looking to learn more about it.