The Color of Sound

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Impression III (Concert) 1911 Wassily Kandinsky

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
- Pablo Picasso

Synesthesia is the rare neurological condition in which senses are entwined—it comes in a myriad of forms—smells can evoke sounds, music can evoke color, letters or shapes can evoke smell. It is explained as a phenomenon in which one sensory experience prompts another. One of the more common form of the uncommon condition is called audition colorée - the sensing of colors in music and vowels.

A theory, based on research conducted at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, suggests that we are all born as synesthetes, that our very malleable, still-forming, new-born brains are able to make connections between different sensory areas— connections that later become blocked as the brain develops and matures. If this theory is true, babies would have one …