Is Seeing Sounds on your Christmas list?

As Santa faces the enviable task of visiting every house on the globe in the space of a few hours, I began wondering what might be top of an Artist’s Christmas list.

Most of you have the requisite tools of the trade, so what if you could ask our rotund rouge friend of Lapland for something slightly more fantastic?

Where algorithms might be a scientific route to creating art, what if you were able to perceive everyday objects, sounds and images differently?

There are very few, if any medical conditions that a person might actually covet, but Synesthesia might just be one. It is a condition whereby the stimulation of one cognitive function also stimulates another.

It is more commonly known as ‘seeing sounds’.

Imagine being able to paint the noise that a spluttering exhaust makes, or the cackle of an old crone stumbling out of The Fisherman’s Tavern after last orders.

It would certainly offer a different angle…

I guess that the downside of being a synesthete (as they are known) is the problem that just nipping down to the shop for a pint of milk and a couple of pan du rustique’s could involve sensory overload.

The solution to that is to never leave the house. The problem with the solution is that, as an Artist, you’d be working with the same material everyday. I mean, there are only so many times one can paint the sound of the kettle boiling, or the crackle of a rasher of bacon curling on the George Foreman.

My offering would be, in this spirit of festive cheer, to pass up on contracting synesthesia and instead try using it’s concept to stimulate you.

But how?

Christmas songs. A touchy subject for the millions of retail workers throughout the U.K and the bane of many a frustrated musician.

I challenge all readers to turn a festive song into Art? How would ‘Santa Baby’ look on canvas? What would ‘Last Christmas’ be like as a frieze?

Utilise the concept of synesthesia to create a Christmas scene. Critics might argue that I’m just asking you to use your imagination but how do you see the jingle in ‘Jingle Bells’? I’d like to know.

Tags: Blog, Christmas, Inspiration