Mike Holden Profile

First Name: Mike Holden
Age: 76
Area you live or were born: English Midlands
Synaesthesia type:  Grapheme-color synaesthesia
Paragraph detailing your experience of having synaesthesia:

I have synaesthesia. No, it isn't a disease. It involves an association of one of the senses with another. Synaesthesia comes in many forms. In my case, when I think of a number, a letter or a word I imagine it coloured. But when I see a number or letter written down I see it as it is - not in my colours. Upper case letters have the same colour as their lower case versions, even though the shape may be quite different.

While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g. A is likely to be red).

My first memory of this sensation was at school when I was about six years old. When I thought of the spelling of the word cat, in my mind's eye I saw the letter 'c' coloured yellow, the letter 'a' coloured red and the letter 't' coloured cream. In the same way the letters of dog were coloured brown, black, brown.


Days of the week and months each have their own colour, usually a combination of the colours of the first few letters of the word. I find it useful remembering phone numbers. These are a combination of the number colours. Complicated you may think but I only have to associate a number colour mix with a name colour mix to aid my memory.



I won't bore you here with the colours I associate with individual letters or numbers. If you're interested you can find them at the end of the article.



The trigger for my synaesthesia



When I was three or four I had a little pull-along truck filled with cube shaped wooden blocks. Each block had a number on one face, a letter on another, a picture on a third and so on. I couldn't read or count at the time but I have always thought that the colours of my synaesthesia numbers and letters came from the coloured numbers and letters on those blocks.

Tim Interview

Tim Synaesthesia Interview from Kieran Panchal on Vimeo.

Millie Artist Profile

Millie Bushell
Age: 20
East London
Synaesthesia type: sound-colour, letter-colour, visuospatial-time

Paragraph detailing your experience of having synaesthesia:

Although I didn’t realise what I experienced had a name, I first realised my brain processed things differently when I was about 11 years old, during a singing lesson. As the teacher was playing scales on the piano, she played a low, ‘ugly, sludgy brown’ note, which I asked her not to play again, explaining how unpleasant it looked and made me feel. Confused, she asked me to clarify, and I explained, “well, you know how middle C is red…”. This, of course confused her further, so we spent the rest of the lesson going through notes and chords to find out their colours. Music plays out like a visual lights and colour display. It’s dynamic, it moves and flashes, it’s vibrant, and it is part of the experience of music for me. I can’t imagine sound without colour and it makes me uncomfortable to think about. It’s not usually a distraction, taking place in my periphery or almost like a screen in my mind. Occasionally, it’s a fully immersive experience and I can’t focus on anything else. I desperately want people to understand, so sometimes if a piece of music particularly captures me, I paint and use mixed mediums to try to represent what I can see. There are frustrating limitations to this, as paintings are more like fixed snapshots or general overviews and often fail to capture the most beautiful momentary flashes of light, colour or texture. I also can’t replicate or induce a sensation. If there’s pulling, squeezing, scratching, I can’t convey that onto canvas. The most frustrating limitation though, is ‘Martian’ colours. These are colours that don’t exist. Colours that I see but can’t create because they aren’t on the visual light spectrum often cause gaps in my paintings which I have to fill with whatever colour I feel best replicates or fits with the rest of the music. I can’t even describe them.
Since discovering sound-colour synaesthesia, I’ve questioned and been questioned on other types of sensory overlap, leading me to discover that no, not everyone believes ‘x’ is lime green, and that understanding the concept of time in a spatial arrangement that extends like a receipt roll all around the space I’m in, isn’t ‘normal’. When people ask, I try to be as descriptive as I can so that they can understand my perception, and potentially figure out if they have it too. I’ve only met one other synaesthete, so despite knowing I’m not alone having read other people’s experiences, read research and spoken to people researching it, I do feel a bit strange vocalising it. The way I experience things is totally normal to me, like it is for anyone, and you don’t question things until someone questions you.

(This could include when you first realised that you had synaesthesia, examples of connections that you experience, do certain things intensify your synaesthesia more than others? do you enjoy having synaesthesia/see it as something that enhances your life? If you feel that you have anything additional to add that could aid a non-synaesthete in understanding your experience)

Verity - Primary Research

Name: Verity Bradford

Age: 27
Location: : Cambridge, England


Synaesthesia type: Grapheme-colour synaesthesia, Chromesthesia, Spatio-temporal synaesthesia, Personality/emotion-colour synaesthesia

Paragraph detailing your experience of having synaesthesia:
The first experience I had of synaesthesia was when I was 5 years old at school and I remember I was learning to write. On the page of my notebook, my A turned red, my B turned blue, and my C turned green.

Whenever I think of letters or numbers I see them in my head as a certain colour. So words have different colours based on the letters they’re made up of. Which means places and objects and anything will have a colour.

People have colours based on the letters in their name. Whenever I think of a person I see their colour. But this can change based on their personality, how close they are as a friend, how well we get on. Colours fade out if the person isn’t very nice, and colours get brighter when the person is awesome or really important in my life. Sometimes I won’t like a person so much based on their colour if it’s not aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes I like a person a lot because the colours of their name look amazing.

Feelings and emotions have colours, so if I’m in a certain mood I can see/feel the colour of that mood all around me.

Because I also have spatio-temporal synaesthesia, I can see hours in the day, days of the week, weeks, months, years, in circular shapes, and again all in different colours. This means memories and periods of time are in colour. I’ll remember an experience or somewhere I visited, or a particular time in my life and see it in all the colours it’s made up of. I’ll also see this in my circular timeline. I can also see time.

My favourite kind of synaesthesia that I have is being able to see music. I don’t just see colours, I see shapes and patterns. I love watching music in my head. And I find different kinds of music emotionally provocative because of the colours. When I’ve been to festivals or listened to live music, a lot of the time I shut my eyes so that I can watch everything. It can be quite an overload on my senses to be experiencing everything externally as well as internally.

When I describe any of this to other people they say it sounds tiring. I think it makes things in my head quite noisy and busy, and I’m overly sensitive in a lot of ways. But I wouldn't want to be without it. It definitely enhances my life and the way I experience things. And finally being able to get it out of my head and paint or draw what I see is amazing.

Request for Web Profiles/Additional Primary Research

Below is an example of an email sent to various synaesthetes who contacted me through the Synaesthesia Association UK, requesting their help with our research and website plans.

I also provided each synaesthete with a template to allow us to configure a consistent profile of each of our onboard synaesthetes.

Reply to Synaesthesia Association focussed on finding painters

Synesthesia experience video draft

Synesthesia: from Marin's perspective- feelings while hearing "starless" by king crimson. The footage is free and from youtube.

                  

Reply from Synaesthesia Association Newsletter Editor

Facebook Status Research

We posted Facebook statuses to see if people would have an understanding of Synaethesia. We got more responses that we had imagined, finding 3 people that have synaesthesia, who we have approached further to get involved in our work.

Marin Smith Primary Research

' With synesthesia I feel colors when I hear sounds. so, every time a guitar strums or someone sings a different color pops into my head. the colors are also textured depending on the instrument, so something like a guitar strum would feel like wood and may look a certain color (perhaps a deep green or smooth red) whereas the clash of a symbol would be very sharp and I would see a dot of color, probably white. if I was talented enough, I would try to paint what I see when I listen to music. it's so hard to explain but it's so clear in my mind. I definitely would relate it to art in the sense that what I see during a song is sort of like an artistic vision, only triggered by something else.'

This is my (Abril's) girl's impression of the song "starless" by king crimson.'It was so cool. the beginning is soft and calm. I saw a sheet of dark blue like water at night but there were little twinkles of yellow like the reflections of the stars in the water and even though it looked dark it felt warm like a hug from the person you love most. then as the song goes on, it gets more electric, like the feeling you get when its 2 am and you’re just starting to get the night going. there were so many more colors after that - but all very bright and mixing together like spilled paint. Orange, red, green, yellow, light blue, and white and getting splashed onto a concrete ground and then more and more paint keeps falling together so it becomes one big colorful puddle. then right as the song ends someone jumps into the paint so that it splatters everywhere and the person walks off leaving a colourful trail behind them”.

Millie (Primary Research)

"I find it funny when people find it cool. To me it's so normal, I find it really strange to try to imagine not experiencing the world this way. it's super interesting that you're making a documentary- I was originally going to study psychology at Oxford because they do a lot of neurological research in this field! The main manifestation I experience is sound and colour, so basically I see sound. It's most intense with music, which is pretty intense, so obviously music is a big part of my life and if a song is vivid enough sometimes I paint. I'm actually working on starting a blog where I paint music/sound... I wouldn't have but so many people have suggested it and encouraged it that I think it would be enjoyable (although I think people would find it weird) to share my experience.
I also intensely associate scents and memory and also words/letters with colours, and have visuospatial synethesia (so for example I see time in a very tangible spatial arrangement).

Sorry if none of this makes sense. I struggle to explain it. I enjoy it but it's so normal to me that I don't really focus on it. It's only when I hear a particularly beautiful or visually interesting song when I'm like wow what would life be if I could only hear this and not see it. For me it enhances my experience and I can't imagine life without it."

Rosie (Primary Research)

When people listen to music, they usually think/fantasise about places they've been or things they have seen, or even places they haven't been and dream of going. I am different in that sense as I don't fantasise, but more visualise colours and patterns when I listen to music. Sometimes I can draw what I see in my head, and it reminds me of psychedelic paintings. One song really stands out to me - Flowers by J Dilla.  

It is hard to understand as its a 2D picture, but this square and the colours are melting into eachother, and sloshing around like OJ to the best of the tune. 

Not every song I listen to makes me 'hallucinate' colours and funky patterns. The colours that pop up are usually different shades of my favourite colours (purple, blue, pink, yellow & orange), and vary to dark grungy colours such as dark greens, navy blue and midnight purples - All depending on the beat / tempo / emotion of the song.  

For me, it's amazing to know that synaesthesia is an actual thing because it makes so much sense to why im so inspired by music to create art. I love colour and groovy drawings and weird animations anyway; music definitely enhances the love I have for art.  

Certain words remind me of certain colours.

I've got a picture of some graffiti I saw in town...it's literally perfect for this because what the graffiti is is what goes on in my head when I listen to music. The artist is Mr penfold. but that's the kind of things I see in my head when I listen to certain music/tunes.

Emailing the UK Synaesthesia Association

Above is an email that I sent to the UK Synaesthesia Association regarding contacting synaesthetes to get involved in our project.

http://www.uksynaesthesia.com/2012contactus.html

Tate Visit

Tate Modern Visit

Below are a few images and ideas we started to develop during our Tate visit.

Brainstormed Ideas;

• Brain
• Memories
• Inside your brain
• Suppressed memories, good vs evil
• Overwhelmed with information - Cildo Meireles - Babel
• Lots of colour - bright for good memories dull for negative
• Stress, anxiety
• Emotions
• Psychology
• Gif, Glitchy
• Glitchy website design
• synaesthesia theme
• Can colours, sounds, pictures etc remind us of certain memories/ emotions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K44j-sb1SRY - glitchy moving pictures, almost look like GIFS.

Favourite art piece from the Tate was Cildo Meireles Babel:

• I really like that the idea behind the piece was that the radios are overloading the audience with information.
• Could be showing how stressful it is to have too much info at once
• Information overload - Could cause the brain stress, sticks with our psychology type theme