When i was deep in art classes at SF City College about a 8 or 9 years ago, I took this fantastic class on Color. I had been waiting patiently on this class which was up at the main campus (all of my other classes were down at Fort Mason campus) but, i wanted to take this class so bad i took it and my ceramics class up there 2 days a week and went to the other side of town the other two.
In this class i learned oh so much. Fascinating stuff about light and pigment and color and vision and all kinds of other things. A really interesting class to say the least. At the end of the semester, we were assigned to do a oral with visuals presentation about color of some nature. It was a really cool thing to see how many different topics 28 people chose. Everything to the history of auto paint to mine, the drama of makeup.
One of the presentations was on a phenomenon i had never heard of and it got me! It stuck me in that place of curiosity that sticks with me for many many years. It was this amazing thing called Synesthesia. It is a disorder (i hate using that word because it makes it seem like there is something inherently wrong with them which there is not. It is just different.) It is a phenomenon where peoples sense wires are crossed so one may hear color or taste shapes.
The person doing the presentation said at the end that she had read the book and had no room for another so she was donating it to any of us who may want it. I WANTED IT! I luckily somehow got the right number or the long straw or however it worked out, i dont remember exactly, but i got the book. The book was called The man who tasted shapes.
I happened to be talking to a friend about this topic and decided to let the scientists and doctors explain what almost a dozen years helped me to forget (the little details which are really needed when trying to explain something as complex as synesthesia.
And full circle i came when i found out that the one video i chose was an interview with that very same doctor that wrote that book all those years back. A lot more i have just found out has been discovered about this condition which makes it even more fascinating to me.
Footnote: It is kinda interesting to know that it is widely agreed that Waisly Kandinsky, the abstract painter, was most assuredly a synesthete.
Anyway, i will let the doctor explain it to you best. with this video. Pretty interesting i say!
