Synesthesia is a condition where one’s senses are simultaneously rewired in the brain, mingling how a person experiences colors, shapes, sounds and flavors. Although it sounds pretty weird, it’s not altogether uncommon; about 1 in 2000 are estimated to have synesthesia. Among those affected are such well-known individuals as Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Liszt, Richard Phillips Feynman and Mary J. Blige.
No two people experience synesthesia the same way. One person may see the color blue whenever the number three is mentioned; another imagines a city skyline when they taste blackberries, or they feel a tickle on their ankle at the sound of a harpsichord.
(Suss Müsik envisions the mischief one could have at the expense of a friend with synesthesia. Would they be forced to hear “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” every time we hold up a yellow card? Would they taste cod oil whenever we yell the word “tablecloth!” You probably do not want to be Suss Müsik’s friend).
For this short piece, we took an approach somewhere between those used by GL Smyth and the bell mechanical. We considered the filtering of sound the way a paper lantern diffuses light: thinly veiled yet repetitious, fragile yet warmly inviting. We sampled the subtle “zzzt” of an electrical switch and ran it through a Scream tape emulator at two simultaneous frequencies.
This fuzzy, breathy loop became the bed for a percussive rhythm we tapped on paper with chopsticks. The final touches were added using heavily diffused piano, plucked/bowed electric guitar, real/fake violins, and an EWI device playing various notes of the E-flat triad from three sampled tones.
In related news: Disquiet Junto participants may be interested in reading about a synesthetic installation that took place in Krakow three years ago, where pieces of music were transformed into fragrance and visuals.
The image is a magnesium flash bulb used by photographers in the 1940’s, which would emit a pungent, metallic odor when activated.
