Seeing colors in words and sound

Synesthesia is the perceptual phenomenon where individuals’ sensory pathways are “linked” in a way that experiencing a stimulus in one sense, such as hearing a sound or touching an object, would also simulate a different sense. Two forms of synesthesia that I find particularly interesting are grapheme–color synesthesia, which individuals can see colors in letters and numbers, and chromesthesia, which individuals can see colors in sound. I can imagine that artists with synesthesia would approach art and design differently than how others would normally. For instance, like our sound analysis project, we would have to design what we perceive in the sound, while artists with synesthesia may see their designs as they are hearing the sound.

I’ve also found works of comtemporary artists with synesthesia. Comparing the works of the two artists, I can see that they have drastically different ways of seeing the things around them as colors, thus the differences in their works.