What Does A Metaphor Look Like?

                                             Furry Light / Chimes by Marcia Smilack          

The Language of Synesthesia

I am a bi-directional synesthete who experiences multiple forms of synesthesia. I photograph reflections on moving water and click the shutter at the moment I experience a texture or sound response. For that reason, a researcher asked for my input on his invention to convert images of one's surroundings into sound to help blind people see.

I sent him photographs of sounds which I selected from the thousands of photos I have taken in the last twenty years that document my synesthetic responses. However, he explained that as no two synesthetes perceive the same way, my images were most likely not universal enough to be useful for his purposes. But that planted an idea in me. Were there any universals? I sorted my images into two piles, putting the sound pile in front of me, shoving the texture pile to the side because I didn't expect to use it. Suddenly, I heard the sound of chimes, only it was coming from the wrong place: peripherally seen, the top image of the texture pile was eliciting the chime sound. When this happened a second time, I found my eureka moment.

To test my hunch of universality, I began an experiment in which I asked non-synesthetes to match sounds to the images I presented. No one had difficulty matching the image to the chime sound. So, now I am considering: first, could my two senses have traded places in the layers of conscious awareness; and second, am I more likely to find universal shapes for sound amid my texture images where they may be hidden even from me; and third, do these images elicit similar responses in both synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike. I wish to share the results of similar experiments at the conference in the hope of learning more about the language of synesthesia.

This dream provides the perfect metaphor for how synesthesia feels, although in waking life, I have no magic button to initiate the experience. I look to Nature instead, specifically reflections on water where light, at certain times of day, sends me into multiple modalities. I experience sound, texture, and motion but never voluntarily, so I put myself in the vicinity of where I know it might occur. My images elicit the same synesthetic responses every time I see them. By sharing them, I hope to transform Nature’s mirror into a useful window for us all.

The art presentation I will give at the Fourth American Synesthesia Association Conference is titled "Singing Arches." I intend to share a small collection of images which, like my usual works, are photographs I take of reflections on water. My images are not only inspired by my synesthetic responses to what I see, hear, and feel; they are, in fact, the direct result of those responses.

The pictures I wish to share in my lecture are from a recent trip I took to Italy where, much to my surprise, the dominating synesthetic response I experienced was not of the color-sound, texture or motion variety I feel when I shoot images off the coast of Massachusetts. In Italy, I was most influenced by my response to shapes and geometry contained in the architecture, particularly arches which elicited, among other synesthetic responses, sound: the arches of Italy sang to me on a regular basis. I often remarked that I should have brought a tape recorder, not a camera, on my trip for it was the sounds of Italy, not the sights, that affected me most strongly. As a synesthete, of course, my camera IS a kind of tape recorder so it is those sounds, as they are captured in my pictures, that I wish to share with the audience.