Synaesthesia Research

'The Girl who Smelled Pink' - http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-girl-who-smelled-pink
A really interesting Article about a 2 year old who began to remark that she could smell certain colours at the age of 2 and her mother is left wondering if we are all born with Synaesthesia.
We found this article particularly helpful as the animator Josh who we got in contact with said over
his Face Time interview that he strongly believes everyone has Synaestheisa or are definitely born with it, it just depends on our perception of it and how obviously it comes to us.

'Identity' VICE - This Artist with Synaesthesia sees colours in music and paints your favourite songs.
This Artists name is Melissa McCracken and her article links nicely with our own ideas and potential visuals for the documentary. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gyxq73/melissa-mccracken-synesthesia-painter-interview

Then we started to look at different kinds of people that have Synaestheisa, people that influence us hugely in our day to day lives. People that are almost everywhere- Celebrities.

Pharell Williams was really interesting to look into:
Singer, rapper, songwriter, music producer,fashion designer and entrepreneur. 
Describes it as visualising what he hears
Helped compose well known songs such as snoop doggs ‘drop it like its hot’, Nelly’s ‘Hot in here’, Gwen Stephani ‘Hollaback Girl’ and Madonas ‘Give it 2 me’. Iconic.
He described it in Remix magazine: "Some people make music and they see things. The condition is called synaesthesia. It's when one of your senses gets more information than what's intended. When you hear, your ears send auditory images to your brain. But some people conjure [visual] images to the sound, as well. That's synaesthesia…’
He’s also used his synaesthesia within the fashion industry.
Does he owe all of his talent to his synaesthesia? I personally doubt it but I think it's an interesting question. Considering Kanye West is also a creative and ventures into fashion, architecture ect which is a trait these two have in common. Is their condition making them a hyper creative? 

      


Kanye West also claims to have the condition, stating:

'I have Synaestheisa; I can see sound in front of me.'

Heroes - TV series 2006 - 2010

A character in this series is deaf and has Chromesthesia (a form of synesthesia) 

She can see the colours from the sound she is producing with the cello.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgnjitfOW5E




This research is also what inspired us to try out different animating techniques and see if we could familiarise ourselves with digital animation to create an effect similar to this.





'Wednesday is Indigo Blue'
'The man who tasted shapes'

Books around the topic of Synaestheisa that were very helpful.