As an arty person I find it quite natural
to have an interest in perception. I
believe that any art I produce can only ever be subjective as no one else can
perceive the world quite like I do. That
is not to imply that my reality is any better than anyone else’s, not that we
would ever know of course. I believe we
all have a very unique perception of reality as this perception is a result
partly of our physical apparatus which must be quite varied as are our physical
appearances and also a result of our learning, experience and conditioning
which all affect the way we see an interpret.
For example CBT teaches how we have mental filters which we
unconsciously use often to reinforce deep rooted beliefs. It allows the mind to ignore and filter out
those things that don’t correspond to these beliefs. A simple example would be the difference in
several peoples’ eye witness account of the same occurrence.
I wonder how the artist’s perception of the
world differs from people who claim not to be artistic or creative. One condition that relates to a less than
average way of perceiving the world is ‘Synaesthesia’, (American spelling
‘synaesthesia’)
synesthesia, neuropsychological trait in which the stimulation of one sense
causes the automatic experience of another sense. Synaesthesia is a genetically
linked trait estimated to affect from 2 to 5 percent of the general population.
Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is the most-studied form of synesthesia.
In this form, an individual’s perception
of numbers and letters is associated with colours. For this
reason, in all the subject reads or hears, each letter or number is either
viewed as physically written in a specific colour (in so-called projector
synesthetes) or visualized as a colour in the mind (in associator synesthetes). Many synesthetes,
however, have more than one type of synesthesia. A number of types have been
reported, ranging from music-colour synesthesia, in which musical notes and sounds
are associated with colour visualization, to tactile-emotion synesthesia, in which certain fabrics and textures
conjure certain emotions in the synesthete. Examples of other types include
sound-colour, spatial sequence, flavour-temperature, flavour-sound, sound-smell, time
units-colours, and personality-smell.
Synaesthesia has been linked to creativity as it is purported to be 7
times more common in artists, musicians, poets and novelists than the rest of
the population. I do have a personal
interest and it’s a fascination subject.
It has been assumed Kandisnky was a synaesthete as his colourful
abstracts are a response to music, ( Kandisnky also had some interesting thoughts
on spirituality and art). Included in
the many listed as having synaesthesia is also Hockney.
Researchers have suggested that at the start of life all of our brains
work this way with interconnectedness and as babies we are all synaesthetes. Although they have located genes that they
feel are responsible for synaesthesia my own thoughts are that it is not so
much a ‘condition’ or ‘dis’ function but rather something that was there and
should still be there but has somehow got lost or overruled. Just like all children are artists and
growing up many lose that sense of wonder, curiosity, imagination and their
creativity.
To quote Picasso: “Every child is an
artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Maybe it’s due to learning language and the human desire to
label, categorise and pigeon hole everything neatly that shuts down these
connections in the brain. We are often
told about the neuroplasticity of the brain, so all brains potentially could
have the extra connections and make all sorts of connections depending on the
way the brain is used, and in anyway, a similar experience can be induced by
drugs. I think maybe the lack of synaesthesia
is due to education and conditioning and I realise an argument to my theory of
it being the normal way of perception would be that people’s synaesthesia
experiences differ. For example those
that have coloured numbers have different colours to specific numbers compared
to other people (although not the case in my family), so how can this way of
perception be correct? Well going back
to my original comments on how we perceive differently: how do we know that my red is anything like
the red that you see and so on. Also,
going deeper it would seem that in life and nature everything is connected. With my limited knowledge I believe that the
visible light spectrum and sound for example are both electromagnetic energy at
different frequencies. Maybe sound does
have a correlating colour? Just because
we don’t usually perceive colour with sound doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Different animals for example perceive the
world very differently. Dogs after all
hear things way out of our audible range, birds and some insects see colour
beyond our visible spectrum. Sound
vibrations have been shown to produce complex patterns and shapes. Science has shown that matter is barely
matter at all and everything is made of vibrating energy. Patterns in nature conform to numbers.
Well going back to art, isn’t appreciation of art in itself
a synaesthetic experience? If we look at
art it is not limited to our sense of vision, it often evokes emotions and
other sensations and reactions. We
associate colours with emotions and feelings not just in art but in everyday
language, ie, feeling blue, green with envy etc.
There is no real conclusion, just my own thoughts and ponderings and no
doubt my own bias towards a world as perceived through a creative brain.
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