Category: Philosophical Approach

On the intriguing association between sounds and colours

smackenz/ / Art, Colour, Crossmodal correspondences, Music, Philosophical Approach, Posts

It seems three main types of crossmodal correspondences between the senses exist: transfer of information, shared associations, and subjective associations (see our blog for the crossmodal correspondences between the senses).

In this blog post, I have invited Researcher Nicola Di Stefano, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy to explain the subjective associations between music and colour. Nicola Di Stefano has contributed numerous publications on both the philosophy and psychology of perception and the aesthetics and psychology of music.

Sounds and colours are two distinct sensory experiences that convey different information about the environment we inhabit. While we typically attribute a colour to every object we perceive, we wouldn’t assert that each object possesses or is inherently associated with a particular sound. Of course, musical instruments produce sounds, and various objects can emit sounds, like hammers, rocks, and sticks, but sound seems to be an ontologically different, namely less foundational, feature of objects compared to colours.

Interestingly, however, intellectuals, researchers, artists, and composers have been long fascinated by the association between those two seemingly radically different sensory experiences. Their idiosyncratic association is evident in sound-colour synaesthesia, one of the most prevalent forms of synaesthesia, a rare neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory (or cognitive) pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in another1. This cross-wiring allows individuals with synaesthesia to experience a unique blending of sensations, such as seeing colours in response to musical notes or chords. Sound-colour synaesthesia has inspired several artworks, including the musical paintings by Kandinsky and Scriabin’s Prometheus, a composition based on the combination of coloured lights and music.

Coloured lights on a board in Scriabin's house

 

Photo retrieved from: Scriabin and the Possible

Psychologists have also explored the mechanisms underlying the consistent association between certain features of sounds and colours in non-synaesthetes. The concept of “crossmodal correspondence” suggests that certain sensory attributes share underlying perceptual or cognitive processes, leading to associations between them2. For instance, studies have revealed that people tend to associate high-pitched sounds with light or bright colours, while low-pitched sounds are often linked to dark colours3. These associations may arise from shared perceptual features, such as the frequency or intensity of auditory and visual stimuli.

One of the most intuitive ways to explain sound-colour correspondences is psychophysical, suggesting that both sounds and colours are vibratory phenomena. However, the sensory systems that process the two signals are quite different, making it challenging to establish a link between sounds and colours based solely on alleged psychophysical similarity. Additionally, an important distinction lies in the octave similarity in music, where sounds at different frequencies (integer multiples of the same fundamental frequency) share the same pitch class (e.g., “D”), whereas in the domain of colour, there is no equivalent octave repetition.

Furthermore, philosophers grapple with the metaphysical implications of the interplay between music and colour. Music, often described as the “language of the emotions” elicits powerful affective responses in listeners, shaping their emotional landscapes4-5. Similarly, colour possesses symbolic and emotional resonance, evoking mood and atmosphere in visual art and design. The intentional combination of music and colour in multimedia art forms, such as film and digital media, underscores the transformative potential of blending sensory modalities to create immersive experiences.

Whether through the lens of synaesthesia, crossmodal correspondence, or aesthetic inquiry, the convergence of music and colour illuminates the intricate interplay between sensory perception, cognition, and emotion. By unravelling the mysteries of this symbiotic relationship, researchers, artists, and practitioners aim to gain deeper insights into the nature of human experience and the profound ways in which art shapes our understanding of the world.

See our blog for Activities; especially 25-27.

Some suggestions for further listening and watching:

Artists use synesthesia to expand their creative limits

Elements of Music

Introduction to Color

Is Your Red The Same as My Red?

Light Organ (Clavière a lumiére) – Scriabin op 65 no 2

Seeing Sound: How Synesthesia Can Change Our Thinking

Seeing song through the ears of a synesthete

Synesthesia & creating your own score

 

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1Ramachandran, V. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2001). Synaesthesia–a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of consciousness studies, 8(12), 3-34.

2Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(4), 971-995.

3Spence, C., & Di Stefano, N. (2022). Coloured hearing, colour music, colour organs, and the search for perceptually meaningful correspondences between colour and sound. i-Perception, 13(3), https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695221092802

4Cooke, D. (1959). The language of music. London: OUP.

5Juslin, P. N., & Sloboda, J. (2011). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The senses and the relationship between them – the philosophical approach

tgraven/ / Philosophical Approach

The relationship between the senses has been of interest to philosophers for centuries: with Empiricists such as Berkley and Locke focusing on how the individual sensory (e.g., visual and tactile) experiences contribute to people’s knowledge about the world around them. And in contrast, Phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty arguing that there is no visual and no tactile experience, but rather a total sensory experience from which it is impossible to single out individual visual and/or tactile contributions. Essential to the first philosophers was the understanding of extremes in sensory perception, comparing “the blind” with “the sighted”.

I have invited Reader Simon Hayhoe, University of Bath to write this very first blog post. Simon Hayhoe has written numerous books and articles on visual impairment and the arts, public spaces, and the philosophy of social research.

The study of the relationship between the senses is central to our understanding of a philosophy of mind. This relationship is essential not just to our understanding of the physical interface between human consciousness and our external reality, but also to topics such as scientific methodology, communication, language, creativity and imagination. At the centre of this philosophical understanding of the relationship between the senses is the philosophical conjecture on blindness as a means of unbalancing or changing our comprehension of this relationship. And, at the root of this conjecture is the belief that studying what “the blind” can or cannot do in comparison to the sighted will help philosophy recognise what are the most significant extremes of our conceptualisation of an existent or non-existent outside world to sensory perception.

Philosophical conjectures on lacking sensory perception began in the ancient world, when blind figures often became linked to a heightened spiritual ability and a potentially heightened sense of intellect or morality, or with a lack of understanding and an implicit immorality. For instance, in Ancient Egypt the figure of the blind harpist and in ancient Greece the mythological figure of the blind seer were felt to have superior inner vision as a result of their “outer blindness.” By contrast, the Old Testament often presented people who were blind as sinners and incapable of worshipping God as a person with perfect vision would do. Unfortunately, research has shown that a belief in the deficit of people who are blind can often be traced back to these negative religious beliefs. As a result, children who were born blind or those who became blind in early childhood in particular were raised with a belief in their own intellectual and moral inadequacy for hundreds of years.

Philosophical conjecture on the blind was elevated to another level during the renaissance and then became central the enlightenment, when a new curious and fictious figure appeared in the literature. In histories of Western blindness this philosophy was described variously as the cult of the man born blind (by me) or the figure became the mythological born totally blind man (by the writer Georgina Kleege). This philosophical cult or mythology became so influential in the philosophy of mind that a single question by William Molyneux to John Locke on the ability of a fictional born blind man was described by the historian Michel Foucault as the founding myth of the enlightenment. Unfortunately, this fictional figure and the literature that followed his birth subsequently reinforced traditional notions of the intellectual and moral deficit of blindness in the public consciousness under the guise of liberal intellect.

It was not until the twentieth century when empirical studies were able to correct this notion of the relationship between the senses and blindness. In particular, work such as John Kennedy’s theory that all humans have the ability to interpret and create images and Richard Gregory’s study of cross modal transfer, which is the ability of the mind to recognise an object through one sense via another sense that was alluded to in Molyneux’s question, showed what was possible through the quality of perception and language. As a result, we now have the power to change the narrative on blindness, as well consciousness, language, perception and imagination – and even of scientific methodology. We can now also stand back and possibly reappraise the harm that has been done by some philosophies on the lives of the many.

Simon has also very kindly suggested some very interesting books for us to read:

Hayhoe, S. (2015). Philosophy as Disability & Exclusion: The development of theories on blindness, touch and the arts in England, 1688-2010. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Hull, J. (1991). Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness. London: Arrow Books.

Magee, B., & Milligan, M. (1996). On Blindness: Letters between Bryan Magee and Martin Milligan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sacks, O. (1995). An Anthropologist on Mars: seven paradoxical tales. London: Picador.

See our blog for Activities; especially 1-3.