From the abstractionism of Klee and Kandinsky to the futurism of Pratella, Carra, and Russolo, via the cubism of Picasso and Braque, arriving, after the experiences of Bauhaus, at the avant-garde art of the mid twentieth century with Schoeffer’s cybernetic art and Fischinger’s abstract film, there are countless works that reserch a deep connection between these two worlds of expression. During the twentieth century, many artists have investigated the possibility of creating relationships between these two forms of expression. However, the most interesting artistic research, concerns the relationship between sound and color and the results obtained in music and painting. We reminded of, for example, in field of poetry, Keats and Schelley who, in the early nineteenth century, often used metaphors and intersensorial images as well as Rimbaud and the Symbolist poets who, at the end of the nineteenth century, combined visual images and sound images or olfactory feelings. So, one thinks that, in individuals with synesthesia, a genetic disorder prevents complete cancellation of hyperconnectivity, so that a more or less conspicuous part of it remains in adulthood.ĭespite the fact that today it is possible to define the synesthetic phenomenon through a precise scientific protocol, by accurate testing, whether obtained through the use of very advanced technological equipment, or through targeted and specific psychological analysis, this concept has always aroused interest in artists. A clearer separation of the senses can be seen with the cortical maturation, which makes the appropriate combination of different perceptions possible. This sort of confusion comes to an and at around the age of three months.

There is some confirmation that this hyperconnectivity is also present in primates and in other mammals during the fetal period, and some studies indicate that babies’ senses aren’t well differentiated, but mixed them in a synaesthetic confusion. This cross-activation of the areas of the sensory cortex, which in most of us function independently, may be based on an excess of anatomical neural connections between different areas. So, what happens is that, for example, the areas used for auditory perception are simultaneously activated with visual or olfactory areas, allowing a kind of double perception of the stimulus normally perceived and analyzed by only one sense. These studies showed that during synesthetic experiences, the brain simultaneously activates different sensory areas, and modern techniques of functional neuroimaging demonstrate that. But we would have to wait until 1980 before that neurophysiological studies would carried out on synesthetic subjects. It was only in the period between 18 that careful studies legitimized this psychological phenomenon and were soon followed by the introduction of the word “synesthesia”. One first sees an interest in synesthesia at the beginning of the XIX century when it was initially considered to be a poetic expedient or as a figment of imagination. And when we talk about it we refer, without wanting, to the phenomenon called SYNESTHESIA: from the greek συν-αισθάνομαι: perceiving together. In the history of culture, only a few phenomena have had the capacity to attract and involve artists and musicians as well as scientists and philosophers like that of the relationship between sound and color. “If we were able to observe the air during a concert,while it vibrates simultaneously with the voices and instruments,we would be amazed at the colors organized and moving within it.”

Musical notes in a colorful wave