Synesthesia Project Document by Nitasha Sarangi

the experience called

SYNESTHESIA Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

the experience called

SYNESTHESIA. a project document for elective three, 2011- 2012

By Nitasha Sarangi

Guide: Prof. Chakradhar Saswade

In Semester Seven

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Printed at Chaap Printing Press, Ahmedabad. 2012 Typefaces Used: Universe LT Std and Palatino LT Std All photographs taken by Nitasha Sarangi. ÂŠ Nitasha Sarangi. All Rights Reserved. No part of any of the content may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including all kinds of information storage without express written permission from Nitasha.

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

This publication is an attempt to gather my understanding of synesthesia and my thought process throughout the research and experiments to the final outcome for the classroom project three. This project was undertaken between October 2011 and January 2012 under the guidance of Prof. Chakradhar Saswade. The approach throughout was experimental and focused mainly on the possible application of synesthesia, a rare psychological phenomenon of sense and perception, in the discipline of visual communication, mainly in graphic design.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.â&#x20AC;? -Gerry Spence

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CONTENTS 01. DISCOVER

I. INTRODUCTION II. PROJECT PROPOSAL III.PROJECT SCOPE

02. DIG AND DELVE

I. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT II. UNDERSTANDING SYNESTHESIA III.OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS

03. DEFINE AND DEVELOP

I. THE STARTING POINT II. MY APPROACH ONE III. MY APPROACH TWO IV. MY APPROACH THREE

04. DELIVER

I. SELECTION II. TACTILE III. SMELL IV. TASTE V. HEAR

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01. DISCOVER I. INTRODUCTION II. PROJECT PROPOSAL III.PROJECT SCOPE

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

INTRODUCTION From my learning of all science books since my childhood, I always knew that the senses are the physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs of perception. To be very specific with the characteristics of the senses, “a system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that responds to a specific physical phenomenon, and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted.” It was always like one part of brain has been assigned one very part to take the responsibility. But it never dawned on me that how meticulously the brain takes care of the functions and in some exceptional cases the brain is capable of mixing them all up and the senses can short-circuit. We can taste sounds, smell shapes, see pain leading to the great experience of synesthesia in some lucky individuals.

“The starting point for understanding experience (whether conscious or unconscious) is in examination of our emotional, purposive and appetitive response.”

The concept of Synesthesia, started building its nest in my life while I was enriching my knowledge of Gestalt laws. From gestalt to perception to senses to gestalt’s unity of senses to synesthesia, my whole journey was purely based on curiosity. And my curiosity grew more to discover I was also synesthetes with vision to touch and pain synesthesia. On reading more and more, I realized consciously adding synesthetic experience to any design solution can add a value to it. As Whitehead said, “The starting point for understanding experience (whether conscious or unconscious) is in examination of our emotional, purposive and appetitive response”, hence here the process of examination starts.

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PROJECT PROPOSAL Nitasha Sarangi > UG Graphic Design, 08 > nitasha_s@nid.edu > 09979905218

PROJECT THREE PROPOSAL (SEMESTER- 7, 2011) Project Brief: To experiment and explore with visuals and images that can evoke a synaesthetic perception for a non-synaesthetic person Project Guide: Mr. Chakradhar Saswade Project Objective: To understand synaesthesia and its application in graphic design to bring a new dimension to its perception and experience. Methodology: Phase 1- Initial research and data collection. Phase 2- Data analysis and understanding. Phase 3- Explorations and visualisation. Phase 4- Finalising on a set of visuals. Phase 5- People feedback and editing. Phase 6- Documentation. Timeline:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Guide: _________________

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Student: _________________

Date: _________________

PROJECT SCOPE As a child I always wanted to experiment, explore, be a scientist or an artist or a poet and do what is not done, discover what is not known, make new things, rather than just following what is already done. That was how I landed in graphic design, because this field gives the maximum freedom to express yet also provides the guidelines to make it useful for someone. This project initiated just out of curiosity and my passion for psychology, art and graphic design. It all started with my inclination to Gestalt and a casual discussion about Gestalt law of union of senses and Synesthesia, with Prof. Suresh Immanuel, a senior faculty of Visual Communication at NID. Being a very recent discovery of neuroscience and psychology, synesthesia has not yet touched the design decisions of the designers and design students as any law of design or any principle in visual communication even though sub-consciously it has been ruling the minds of all artists, designers, writers, poets and other creative professionals over centuries. Knowing about synesthesia, made me realise the essence of experience in design. As end users, all our choices are based on the experience obtained and as designers the most accepted work are those that gives an extra experience to the user, in other words triggers the mind. This fact made me believe that synesthesia has a great scope in design. And from there, this journey begun. From the starting of the project, my main objective has been to note down the phenomenon and its characteristics so as to deduce principles out of it, to make its application easier. In this project, I have tried to understand synesthesia and image making with its characteristics in mind, to evoke synesthetic perception in a nonsynesthetic environment. This project is a small initiative towards the objective of the whole but very important as it marks the start.

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02. DIG & DELVE I. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT II. UNDERSTANDING SYNESTHESIA III.OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS

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HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The history of synesthesia is very important if we are to understand the phenomenon, because the word itself has been used to describe diverse phenomena during different eras. While going through the reports and existence of synesthesia throughout the literature and art, it was astonishing to find the phenomenon unexamined by neurologists even through, synesthesia has been known to medicine for about 300 years. It was noticed English ophthalmologists Thomas Woolhons but from circa 1860 to 1930, it was forgotten, remained unexplained because of psychology and neurology’s prematurity at that time. Then psychological theories were more about associations and concepts of nervous tissues. It was even a taboo for a long time to acknowledge the existence of an inner life. relating cognition to brain function is in fact a recent development in psychology. To the contrary, much ink has flowed; quite much of colour has spread discussing synesthesia in art, music, literature, linguistics, natural philosophy and theosophy. Two famous books appeared, Suarez de Mendoza’s in French (1890) and Argelander’s in German (1927) even discussed the physiology of senses. Most generally emphasized is the coloured hearing, the most common form of synesthesia. By mid 19th century, synesthesia had already excited an art movement that sought sensory fusion, and a union of the senses, appearing more as an idea. Fusion concerts of light and sound, sometimes including odor, were getting more and more popular often featured with colour organs and keyboards. These are the deliberate attempts that I call synthetic synesthesia that were qualitatively different from the real-involuntary experience. In such a climate, people were intrigued with a pre-conceived notion that synesthesia might have a direct link to the unconscious or subconscious. However later it was objectified and mind was Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

made the black box temporarily. And any idea related to the distortion in mind was considered as a taboo. Through its history, synesthesia has got many of the mechanistic explanations including that of Sir Isaac Newton (as early as 1704) who struggled to device mathematical equation relating sound waves and light waves. Goethe noted colour correspondence in his 1810 work, Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) The 19th century saw an alchemical zeal in the search for universal correspondences and a presumed algorithm for translating one sense into another. This approach was even consistent with the common view of the time, of a clockwork universe that based on the Newton’s uniform law of motion.

“a neat link between the work of scientists a hundred years ago and contemporary efforts to understand and explain the condition.” Today it is possible to take the characteristic details of a synesthete and find similar examples in classical literature. In John Harrison’s words, “a neat link between the work of scientists a hundred years ago and contemporary efforts to understand and explain the condition.”

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Synesthesia is a curious condition in which an otherwise normal person experiences sensations in one modality when a second modality is stimulated Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

UNDERSTANDING SYNESTHESIA

Some characteristics of synesthetes are as follows: Synesthesia runs in families Synesthetes often report ‘odd’ or weird colour they cannot see in the real world but see only in association with numbers. Some colour-blind have even reported seeing certain colours only upon seeing numbers. If a person has one type of synesthesia, he/she is also more likely to have a second or third type. Synesthesia appears to be more common among artists, poets, novelists and creative people in general. Synesthetes often report that if the number is printed in the wrong colour, it looks ugly. There are hints that patients with TLE may have a higher incidence of synesthesia. Most synesthetes claim that even when they visualize the number, the corresponding colour is seen, and surprisingly, the colour is more vivid that when it is actually seen. (Presumably not being vetoed by actual sensory input) But in some synesthetes, the colour associated with imagined numbers is actually less vivid. These appear to be tremendous heterogeneity in synesthesia. There has been suggested that there may be distinct groups, we call ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ synesthetes that can be operationally defined and distinguished by our experiments. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

It is so natural to them that they are often astonished to learn that everyone did not have this capacity Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Ordinary language use is rich with synesthetic metaphors (‘loud shirt’ or ‘hot babe’) Synesthetically induced colours are consistent across months or even years of testing. Synesthetically induced colours can lead to pop out. Sometimes even a missing grapheme can even induce synesthetic colour. Some synesthetes even have colours and other sensory stimulations for pains, fall, orgasms, touch, smells, etc. It is so natural to them that they are often astonished to learn that everyone did not have this capacity. It manifest at an early age of 3 or 5 and the trait is very sex related. Females have a more chance of inheriting it. Synesthesia is spatially extended. They have a reference that is neither imagined nor retinally derived. Synesthesia is memorable. For e.g. a synesthete could remember a name as a colour “she has a green name – I forget, it was either Ethel or Vivian.” Here the names are confused because they are green but the synesthetic green is recalled. Synesthesia is emotional. Synesthetes have an unshakable conviction and sense of validity that they perceive is real. They trust their synesthetic perception. For some of them, letters and numbers have colour smell, gender and personality whereas auditory and visual stimuli produce sensations of taste, touch, shape and colour. Synesthetes have a well-developed innate memory that is amplified by use of the parallel sense as a mnemonic device. Possessing excellent topographical memory is very common among synesthetes.Synesthesia is also seen to be associated with hypermnesia, the exceptional ability of exact or vivid memory. Synesthesia is a rich way of feeling, highly enjoyable for those who posses it. Losing the ability, can be catastrophe, a state similar for a normal person to go blind or not being alive at all.

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SYNESTHESIA AND PEOPLE

Everyone is synesthetic to some degree. Three properties of synesthetic perception suggest how it is possibly a universal trait that may even have an inborn basis. Much more common in children than in adults and few of them even lose the ability as they grow up. But can remember some of the experiences. Synesthesia consists largely (though not exclusively) of regular congruence between specific aspects of experience in different modalities. By which it means, synesthetes show systematic relations among dimensions of given modalities. E.g. soft, low-pitched sounds are dim/dark in colour, as sounds get louder or higher in pitch, the colour brighten. Low-pitched sounds are associated with large, rounded forms that are darkly coloured, whereas high pitched sounds appear as smaller, sharper in contour and brighter. The connections between pitch and brightness, between loudness and brightness and between pitch and size exemplify the general rule that correspondences between dimensions characterize synesthetic perception. (Mark 1974) Some non-synesthetes may even experience synesthesia under the influence of psychotropics such as LSD or mescaline. (experience very similar to those of idiopathic synesthetes) Most common form of synesthesia is the grapheme-colour/ colour-grapheme synesthesia. There are many other types as coloured to time units, sounds, phonemes, personalities, taste, pain, odors, temperature and touch; sound to touch, taste, temperature and smell; taste to hearing and touch; touch to smell, taste, and hearing. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

VISUAL-RELATED SYNESTHESIA In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, grapheme-color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are “shaded” or “tinged” with a color. While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters

6.5% COLOURED TASTE

According to Richard Cytowic, coloured-sound synesthesia is “something like fireworks”: voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends.For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.

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03% COLOURED TOUCH

5.5% COLOURED ODOUR

13% COLOURED SOUND

66% COLOURED GRAPHEME

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PHENOMENA SIMILAR TO SYNESTHESIA From the functional and anatomical point, synesthesia alike phenomena are as follows: Drug-induced synesthesia. (LSD and other hallucinations) Eidetic imagery, other forms of hypermnesis. Simple synesthesia. Sensory deprivation, hallucination, release-type and otherwise. Hallucinosis of temporal epilepsy. Mesencephalic hallucinosis (penduncular hallucinosis of Lhermitte) Electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB)

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SYNESTHESIA IN DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

The use of literary devices in literature and daily use is a sign of existence of synesthesia. In literature (both fiction and poetry), there are many instances of the same. We take these literary devices as just a way of saying phrases. Hence upon learning of synesthesia, non-synesthetes often ask, “is it real?” And it is very evident and obvious on their part but also true on the part of all synesthetes, who experience the phenomenon. The answer for the same then becomes much objectified as the whole phenomenon is “Real for whom?” is the condition. As rational characters, we often rely on proof than a direct experience. But synesthesia the truth here is beyond the existence of a proof or evidence. Here Thomas Nagel’s bat theory makes sense. An organism consciously can only know the mental state of the organism that he is. Unless an organism is a bat or a whale, the organism cannot know what it feels like a bat or a whale. In our literature, some literary devices like metaphor join reason and imagination and hence the conceptual system on which reality is based is in part imaginative. Likewise, creative ideas are partly rational in nature, as in emotion. (de Sousa, 1983) Objectivity fails to see that the human system of concepts is metaphoric, involving an imaginative understanding of one thing in term of another. Subjectivity fails to see that even the most imaginative flights occur in the context of objective experience gained by living in a physical and cultural world. The elaboration of metaphors, for example is an imaginative form of rational thinking. Metaphor physically encapsulates our relations with the world and though it is a means of discerning the similar in the dissimilar, it is emphatically not a product of reasoned analysis.

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real FOR WHOM ? is important

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The best metaphor to construct and deconstruct synesthesia could be taking simple spatial and directional word like UP and DOWN. UP AND DOWN Conscious is UP, unconscious is down. Wake UP. I’m UP already. I’m an early riser. I fell asleep. He went under anesthesia. I sank into a coma. He dropped dead. Controlling is UP, being controlled is down. It is for the felicitation of the top rankers of the exam. He has many people working under him. She rose from the ranks. Healthy is UP, Sickness is down. I am down with fever. He rose from death. Reasoning/logical/Rational is UP, emotion is down. Guilt ridden. Despair ridden. She pulled herself up from the state. Good is UP, bad is down. The physical basis for these metaphors is that most mammals (esp. human) sleep lying down and stand up when awake. Well being, control and things characterized as good are all up. Because we control our physical environment, animals and sometimes even other people and because our ability to reason is assumed to bestow this control, control is UP implies Human is UP and therefore, rational is UP. Another example of ‘synesthetic metaphor’ found in everyone is the use of the word ‘disgusting’. (and other similar words with this same effect) We generally say this in response to unpleasant smells and tastes while at the same time raising our hands up and scrunching up our noses. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

P.S. Darwin showed that a new born infant would do thissuggesting it hardwired. Going away from the context of smell and taste, we do the same thing whenever we use the word even if it means in moral context. The origin of this effect can be traced back to early mammals, who may have used the orbito-frontal cortex exclusively for olfactory and gustatory disgust, but as mammals became more social, it came to communicate or signal olfactory disgust to other (stay away from that rotten food) and then eventually to communicate moral and social disgust (stay away from that rotten man) A simple way of how evolution works.

‘God is hacker.’ -as Francis Crick said In Shakespeare literature, he writes ‘Juliet is the sun’, our brain instantly understands this. We do not understand it as Juliet is the glowing ball of fire rather we make the link, she is warm like sun, nourishing and radiant like the sun. With all the experiments done till now, mainly the ones to understand why all creative people more synesthetic, it has been found that there is an unashamedly phrenological view of metaphor and synesthesia. But it generally seems very implausible to many because of the apparent arbitrariness of metaphorical association. (like rolling stone gathers no moss) Yet metaphors are not arbitrary. Lakoff and Johson have systematically documented the non-arbitrary way in which metaphors refer to the body and many more are inter-sensory (or synesthetic) Many synesthetic metaphors are uni-directional (e.g. from auditory to visual modality) One of the greatest queries in psychology is how language evolved. Alfred Russell Wallace was so frustrated in trying to answer this that he felt compelled to invoke divine intervention. Lately, even Chomsky, the founding father of modern linguistics, has expressed the view that, given the complexity of language, it could not have possibly evolved through natural selection. But from my reading and analysis it could have possibly origin from synesthesia. Few experimental evidences prove that. For one of the picture (below) is ‘bouba’ and ‘kiki’ in Martian language. (Developed by Kohler, Werner and Wapner) Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

And when asked to people who do not know the language, 95% of them picked left as kiki and right as bouba, even if/though they have never seen these stimuli before. This is an example how phoneme and graphemes are linked in our mind and hence, provides one of the vital clues for understanding the origin of proto-language. Secondly it has been proposed that the existence of a kind sensory-to-motor synesthesia, which may have played an important role in the evolution of language. The most familiar example of this is dance or to make it more generic tapping of foot unconsciously to the beats of the music, where the rhythms of movement synesthetically mimics the auditory rhythm. This type of synesthesia could be based on cross-activation not between two sensory maps but between a sensory (i.e. auditory) and a motor map (i.e. Broca’s area). This means that there would be a natural bias towards mapping certain sound contours onto certain vocalizations. Even some experiments proved that the representation of certain lip and tongue movements in motor brain maps may be mapped in arbitrary ways onto certain sound inflections and phonemic representations in auditory regions and the latter in turn may have non-arbitrary links to an external object’s visual appearance. (as in bouba and kiki) Even the fact that lips and tongue movements and other vocalizations may be synesthetically linked to objects and events they refer to in closer ways than we usually assume and this may have been especially true early in the evolution of the protolanguage of ancestral hominids, e.g. words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small /I/ with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts (e.g. words such as ‘little’, ‘petite’, ‘tiny’ and ‘diminutive’) whereas the opposite is true for the words denoting large or enormous. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Another fact that might have also contributed is synesthesia caused by cross-activation between two motor maps rather than between two sensory maps or synesthesia. It was also noted by Darwin (1872) that when cutting something with a pair of scissors, one often unconsciously clench and unclench his/her jaws, as if its mimicking the hand movements. This can be an example of synkinaesia between the motor maps for the mouth and hand. Even in the example cited before of mouth shapes, might be synekinetic mimicking of the pincer-like opposition of thumb and forefinger to denote small size. Also when pointing one ‘I’ uses his/her index finger to outward to the person in front (you). ‘I’ also produce a partial outward pout with lips invariably in all languages (in English ‘you’, French ‘vous’, Hindi ‘tu’, Oriya ‘tu’) whereas when ‘I’ point inward (in English ‘me’, French ‘moi’, Hindi ‘main’, oriya ‘mu’) This vocabulary of gesture could have evolved from the corresponding vocabulary of tongue/lip movements, causing vocals accompanied by gesture. All the examples, experiments, analysis and evidences, provide strong suggestion for language evolution through synesthesia even though not prove that all languages are synesthetic in origin. The subsequent elaboration and refinement of the deep structure of language may have relied on other environmental selection pressures, biological constraints and semantic contstraints. In art, synesthetic element can be traced everywhere, everytime, even if it was not added deliberately by the artists. Some paintings and work of art can be seen in the following pages. These paintings and artworks really inspired me to work on this project, everytime I felt discouraged.

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Paintings of Wassily Kandinsky Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Paintings of Delaunay Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Paintings of Miro Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Paintings of Mondrian Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Album Covers of ECM. By Shasha Klies Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

03. DEFINE & DEVLEOP I. THE STARTING POINT II. MY APPROACH ONE III. MY APPROACH TWO IV. MY APPROACH THREE

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

THE STARTING POINT

With a basic idea about synesthesia and sense and perception and psychology I started with this project at a very early stage of the project. My guide, Chakradhar Saswade, had advised me from the very beginning to start with the execution process of image making from the research stage itself which has proven to be a great approach to an experimental project like this. Hence along with all research and understanding, there was always an image, a process that has led to the final outcome of the project. After a few rounds of discussion about the subject and its execution, we concluded on photography as the medium. And from there on, there have been different levels of approach to bring in synesthetic experience in a non-synesthetic environment. While the experience is very subjective from person to person, situation to situation, even with the state of mind, effort has been made to make it universal.

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PHOTOGRAPHY WAS SELECTED AS THE BASIC MEDIUM. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

The impression called sensation can also be the theme of expression

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MY APPROACH ONE

Along with the understanding of synesthesia, it was important for me to understand sense organs and sense perception. After all, the result of synesthesia is a perception, a feeling or to be very specific a modified sensation. This idea led me to image making based on feelings evoked on the sight of an image. Few of the outputs of the process are the images in the following pages of this section.

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BUT! But after a few reviews and surveys and feedbacks and of course with the progress in research and study, it was very evident that feelings are very subjective. Even in a mono-synesthetic environment, a single sense evoking a feeling without integrating other sensations and senses, was also varying from person to person. Hence it was not fulfilling the purpose of being universal. This led to exploring of other and I landed in approach two, that seemed to work till I found a better approach.

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Directional images in a context can actually lead to a particular action.

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MY APPROACH TWO

Here, I was at a stage, where one knows few of the many things from the ‘not to do’ list but absolute no idea about what to do. Hence I decided to spend more time studying people, reading books and collecting information. Once while discussing with my guide, the word ‘directional’ struck my mind and I started exploring the same. I had noticed that vision of something at times does evoke another person to do the same thing. For e.g. yawning, a sight or even a thought of somebody yawning can make a person yawn, similarly looking at a picture of a person with something (edible) on his/her lips can make the viewer lick his/her lips. On the basis of this understanding of mine, I went ahead and explored and directional approach. Few of the outputs of the process are the images in the following pages of this section.

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BUT! This approach was working absolutely fine till I made a bunch of images and starting looking at it with a holistic view. Later, I and my guide realized it was very direct and narrow and hence was limiting oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thinking and experience. And I moved ahead to find a new way.

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At times, it is as simple as bridging the gaps. Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

MY APPROACH THREE

After the failure of different styles, I decided to take a break and started painting, sketching, doodling doing other projects and even clicked photographs. I did everything but this project and that really proved to be helpful. After few days I saw a striking similarity in my sketches and photographs. I noticed my paintings, sketches and doodles had the synesthetic experience or at least were hinting to one or more. My researches and study was reflecting in my work. There was the crack between the conscious and sub conscious that needed a bridge. I started analyzing my thought processes behind those images. I realized a lot of abstraction was giving a better scope for a synesthetic experience. From the analysis of my study and research, I derived that the basic sense organs are common to everyone and hence the basic characteristics of those sense organs. Hence I characterized the senses, made a list and went ahead with image development. Later both I and Chakradhar agreed upon the approach. I continued exploring in the same approach and followed by a lot of selection and rejection processes and detailing till we finalized. Few image explorations in the following pages of this section.

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TACTILE Types: Touch, Pain, Thermoception Characteristics: Spreading from one point, Pain, Heat, Cold, Pinch, Texture Visual Attributes: Radiating, Textured, Bright, Contrast, Sudden, Fast

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SMELL Types: Sweet, Spoilt, Weird. Characteristics: Memory, Emotion evoking, Volatile, Chemical, Earth and Air Visual Attributes: Light, Fluid, Spread, Transparent/translucent), Blur, Hazzy

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TASTE Types: Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Salty Characteristics: Mixture, Liquid and Solid, Wet, Translucent, Dispersive Visual Attributes: Fluid, Soft focus, Contrast, Dispersive, Distributive, Division

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HEAR Types: Soothing, Rhythmic, Noisy Characteristics: Layered, Beat, Rhythm, Noise, Vibration Visual Attributes: Repitition, Depth of field, Noise and Distinct foreground and backgorund.

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04. DELIVER I. SELECTION II. TACTILE III. SMELL IV. TASTE V. HEAR

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SELECTION

The process of selection, rather rejection, started right after the images were produced. Me and my guide, Mr. Chakradhar Saswade, we sat down and looked into the images in detail. A lot of finer detailing was done and then the final series of images for each sense were produced. The following pages contain the series and some application of the sound visuals for album covers.

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TAC Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

CTILE Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

tactile | the touch of smooth and rough

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tactile | the textured tint I

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tactile | the textured tint II

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tactile | the patterned flow

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tactile | unthaw

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100

tactile | the winding disperse

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tactile | the glee

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tactile | spreading ways

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tactile | the innocent pain

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tactile | the bright arc

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tactile | the vivid hot

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tactile | the texture glow

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tactile | the red core

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tactile | the escape shine

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tactile | the light within

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tactile | the bright noise

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tactile | the hot obstruct

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MELL Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

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smell | the smooth fuse

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smell | the blur memory

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smell | the earth and the air I

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smell | the earth and the air II

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smell | the changing memory, the changing emotion

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smell | into the blur

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smell | the haze

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smell | the light flow I

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smell | the light flow II

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smell | bleary clean

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smell | the earth and the air III

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smell | solace

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TAS Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

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STE Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

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taste | the emerald sweet

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taste | the tangy jot

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taste | the other bud I

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taste | the other bud II

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taste | the green territory

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taste | the healthy blast

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taste | the soft divide

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taste | the orapple

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taste | the straaple

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taste | the kiwiple

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taste | the pulpy sparkle I

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taste | the pulpy sparkle II

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taste | the pulpy sparkle III

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taste | the pulpy sparkle IV

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taste | the fruity lip I

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taste | the fruity lip II

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taste | the fruity lip III

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taste | the fruity lip IV

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taste | the fruity lip V

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HE Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

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EAR Nitasha Sarangi | Project Three Document | National Institute of Design

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hear | the aplomb

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hear | the striking energy

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hear | the dull restless I

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hear | the dull restless II

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hear | the white sparkle

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hear | the dark womb

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hear | the musical noise

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hear | gracefully loud

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hear | the fusion I

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hear | the fusion II

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hear | the elegant roar

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hear | the sudden tap

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hear | the rushing silence

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hear | the spreading waves

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hear | the fusion III

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hear | the soft rhetoric

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hear | the sprouting wave

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hear | the dancing glow

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hear | exceptional

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hear | the sweet silence

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hear | the captured joy

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hear | vanishing path

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hear | shooting beat

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hear | the quiet bit

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ALBUM

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COVERS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to thank my guide, Prof. Chakradhar Saswade for all his guidance, support and encouragement, throughout the project. I am very grateful to Prof. Immanuel Suresh, with whom I had my first discussions on synesthesia and later, with his encouragement this project took its shape. I would also like to thank my friends, batchmates and other people for being patient during my surveys and studies. Special thanks to all the artists for their inspiring works, Prof. V.S. Ramachandran, Dr. Richard E. Cytowic, Dr. David Eagleman, and others for their outstanding studies and research work in synesthesia. Their work always motivated me to move ahead with the project. Last but not the least I would like to thank my parents, sister, Akash and all my friends for always being there. Without all of them, this project would not have been possible.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cytowic, Richard E., Synesthesia- A Union of the Senses. 2nd Ed. The MIT Press. Katz, David, Gestalt Psychology: Its nature and significance. New York : Ronald Press, 1950. Broadbent, D.E., Perception and Communication. Oxford University Press, USA, 1987. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961, Phenomenology of perception /â&#x20AC;&#x2039;Maurice Merleau-Ponty ; translated by Colin Smith. London : Routledge, 2002, c1958. Lal, Lakshmi, Ganesha: Beyond the form. India Book House,1995. Banerji, Projesh, Nataraj: The Dancing God. Cosmo Publications 1985. Kandinsky, Wassily, Concerning the spiritual in art and painting in particular 1912. New York : George Wittenborn, 1960. Grohmann, Will, Wassily Kandinsky: life and work. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1960. Kandinsky, Wassily, Kandinsky (1866-1944). With an introduction and notes by Herbert Read. London : Faber and Faber, 1960. Rosenthal, Erwin, The changing concept of reality in art. New York: George Wittenborn, 1960. Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, The new vision and abstract of an artist. 4th ed. New York, : George Wittenborn,, 1950 Muller, Lars, Windfall Light: The Visual Language of Ecm. Switzerland ; Larc Muller Pub. 2010

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WEBLIOGRAPHY

The phenomenology of Synesthesia. http://www.imprint.co.uk/ pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf. Visited on 15 October, 2011. Eagleman Laboratory. http://eaglemanlab.net/ Visited on 03 November, 2011. Q & A with David Eagleman about Synesthesia. Visited on 04 November, 2011. The Synesthesia Battery. http://synesthete.org/ Visited on 10 January, 2012. Ted talks. http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_ on_your_mind.html. Visited on 13 December, 2011. Ted blog. http://blog.ted.com/2008/06/13/synesthesia_on_1/ Visited on 13 December, 2011. Synaesthesia: not a mental anomaly, a mental characteristic. http://standoutpublishing.com/Blog/archives/39-Synaesthesianot-a-mental-anomaly,-a-mental-characteristic.html. Visited on 25 December, 2011. Cognitive Fun. http://cognitivefun.net/multimedia/post/5058 Visited on 07 January, 2012. My mind on books. http://mymindonbooks.com/?p=2495. Visited on 08 December, 2011. Anthropology. http://anthropology.net/2009/11/12/davideagleman-heaven-hell-and-synaesthesia/ Visited on 20 December, 2011.

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