The Wolf Victorious

Ahh! I missed this when it happened, but thank you!

You probably knew this, but I just discovered that goji berries are also called wolfberries. I enjoy this fact.

I support your child naming decisions entirely.

digitalfare:

and anyone who has it/knows a lot about it can answer.

Does synethesia work in reverse?

Example: you experience color(s) when you listen to musical notes. Assuming you could reproduce the color/pattern perfectly on paper (in paint, ink, whatever), would seeing that representation make you hear the sound?

Maybe A-sharp is a sparkling turquoise. If you reproduce that turquoise color on paper, would seeing it make you think of an A-sharp?

And not just sound and color. Any cross over. Is it a two-way connection or does it work only in one direction?

As far as I know, it does work in reverse, but no for everyone and not for every type of synesthesia.

Using your example, one synethete might be able to experience audio -> visual and visual -> audio, but not be able to experience visual -> taste even if she or he experiences taste -> visual.

It can also be case specific. So maybe A# works both directions, but C# does not.

From what I’ve experienced, it’s pretty common to have a two-way connection for graphemes (colours and numbers/letters) and audio/visual, but less so for something like sound/taste or smell/tactile.

It may have to do with the amount of generalisation that goes along with the association. (So that if ‘H’ is yellow, but so are a few other letters, H will always bring up yellow, but yellow might bring to mind several things at once since it is more general than a specific letter.)

The followers of a-synesthetic-world might want to answer, too!

digitalfare:

I don’t think I’ve talked about it here, but I’m writing a novel-length story. It’s about superheroes, sort of. There aren’t capes and spandex. People with special abilities work with the local police force to keep the city safe. Or they don’t—it’s their choice. I finished a very rough draft a couple months ago and I’ve been working on expanding it.

Anyway, here’s a character, Alicia Quinn, that I wrote a short scene about earlier this week. I don’t know if I’ll add it into the larger story, so for now it’s under the cut.

Read More

This is captivating.

Marc-Jacques Mächler, on the negative influence of synaesthesia on learning.

Synaesthesia and Learning

A Differentiated View of Synaesthetic Perceptional Awareness

(via a-synesthetic-world)

robofillet:

glitterfancyslk:

lauraafv:

soldieronpond:

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin

I stumbled across this while looking for a book for my cousin’s new baby. I was so intrigued by the whole idea. On each left page there was words written in braille and then again in white text. It was the description of colors, according to how a blind child would experience. On the right there were raised etchings of what each page was describing. It’s so beautiful.

One page in particular that really caught my attention was the one describing the color red. It talked about how red is how it feels to bite into a ripe strawberry, or the stinging on your knee after you fall down.  Blue was the feeling of sunshine on your face. 

It’s just so astounding that someone managed this, as the idea of how to describe a color to someone who has no reference has always fascinated and baffled me.

Picture source here

Available to purchase here

This is beautiful ♥.

Oh, my gosh.

Fantastic.

This is fascinating. It reminds me of an article about a blind synesthete who imagines the colours of sounds despite not being able to see them.

(via digitalfare)

This is really interesting. I’ve spoken to several grapheme synesthetes who also notice that an entire written languages will create different colour associations. I think that this has to do with the prominence of certain letters withing the language. (English, for example, has a very warm colour palate with lots of reds, golds, and oranges with touches of cooler colours, whereas French is very cool to begin with in many greens and is warmed up by gold. This is because English uses ‘h’ ‘a’ ‘n’ and ‘t’ frequently whereas French uses a lot of ‘e’ ‘s’ etc).

What;s even more interesting is that the sounds of the languages parallel this. This means that we can typically tell what language something is being spoken due to the colours created by the sounds even if we are unfamiliar with the words.

a-synesthetic-world reblogged this link and I spent a good deal of time looking around. It’s fantastic to find a place that has articles and conferences.

Taking a running leap off of the diving board set up here, I will attempt to swan dive into a useful conclusion. (Or a water death).

What I’m wondering is, going with the previous assumption that grapheme synesthesia (GS) can be understood as the product of an interaction between the shape of a printed character and the position of a sort of internally perceived light, if GS is not so much an abstract connection between two entirely unrelated stimuli, but rather a concrete associated between light and space.

Given the previous examples, I’ll use O (black) and I (white) again. The shape of ‘O’ creates a large space that all light becomes trapped inside, creating black. ‘I’ reflects this light. This is not so abstract as it may seem, given the properties of light and space. An object that holds all light and does not reflect any back will appear black in colour. An object that reflects light will appear white. This is why it’s cooler to wear white in the hot sun than it is to wear black.

This is where we dive, get ready.

If each letter takes up a certain amount of space and creates a semi-unique area in which light is either absorbed or reflected according to where the light is, then logically, there is a semi-unique amount of light that pertains to each as well. Examine the room that you are sitting in. It has certain qualities lent to it by the positioning of the objects within it, the proximity of the walls and ceiling, and the colours that are present. Now imagine if the ceiling were higher or lower, the walls farther from you, if it were brighter, dimmer. Does it same the same, or does the room have at least a slightly different ambiance and tone? I hope that it’s the latter or else all my time spent in art courses was useless.

The letters could, in essence, carve away the space where the light can be in a similar fashion for the synesthete. If so, then all the synesthete has done is applied a basic human recognition of the designs that he or she is in has on them to the microcostic space created by the letters. The letters allow or prohibit a certain amount of light to enter into the space provided and are assigned a colour based upon how the light interacts.

A documentary on synesthesia, Derek Tastes of Earwax, considers the possibility that synesthesia might be a beneficial evolutionary trait, which is exciting.

Another far-too-frequent synethesia post brought you by Beethoven Awareness Month on WQXR and ridiculously long commutes.

Briefly for those who are not used to my obsession, synesthesia is the involuntary translation of one sense into another. The experiences are different for every synesthete. Grapheme synesthesia is one of many types where printed characters become associated with something else, typically colours, sometimes sounds, tastes etc etc.

Onward.

As I was driving along Route 10 today, I was thinking about how I’d been explaining the realization that the last 7 letters of my alphabet were metallic. The only way to describe it was that one day the “light came on” and they were suddenly shiny. Prior to that, they could only be described as having some sort of dim 3-dimensional property, but it didn’t contain a definite colour, personality, or any of the other attributes that the other letters had (i.e. Q is deep purple, related to 6 and 9, queenly, smells of spices and vanilla).

The interesting factor in the realization is light. Only once I became conscious of the role of light was I able to determine what the other letters had always been subconsciously. Once this idea is expanded outward, it implies that perhaps all of the other attributes are also dependent upon how the perceived light interacts with them.

This would might explain the shape continuity that many grapheme synesthetes seem to experience where characters of similar shape such as 8 and S (blue), or 7 and L (gold/lavender) correspond with one another. Because the light interacts with each of them, the colours are sort of carved out or pooled up in the white space between the lines. Additionally, because every synesthete has a different relationship of the characters to the light source, the variation in how each letter is perceived (so where my S is blue, another synesthete might see yellow) might be explained.

Using some related letters as examples.

Y and U: Y has a golden quality for me since the light pools into the top like a cup, but stays close to the light source which comes from above and slightly to the right. U, on the other hand, is much deeper, so the light that pools down has shadow cast across it turning it an amber/bronzy colour. Related to these are V, X, & W.

E and D: E is entirely different from Y and U since the light cannot pool inside. Only what can creep into the open right side can create a colour illusion, which in this case for me is medium green. It’s not too dissimilar from a cave in a forest. The light filters through a sort of crisp green. D (medium blue) on the other hand, is closed off entirely on the right side, which means that it cannot be as light as E. However, since the left side is straight, light is still able to create definition in its surface. Imagine the shadow cast by a rock onto snow when the sun is setting. The same blue that you see is similar.

O and I: O, unlike D, has nothing for the light to catch, but has a large surface area. Because of this, it absorbs the most light and is black. I is the opposite. With the least surface area, it reflects everything and is white.

This seems to be consistent with the rest of the letters as well. B and R and both red (so is 5) and they all share being partially open and partially closed on the right side. Those open on the bottom or turned around (G, 6, Q, 9) are light purple and dark purple respectively.

These are the thoughts for now. How the light source comes about I have no idea. I suspect that mine might be related to the massive amount of time that I’ve spent in the woods since I was a small child. It also makes me wonder if some people have strobe lights or disco balls.