What If You Could Hear Colors and See Sound Like Billie Eilish?

hearing tellers and seeing sounds and no I didn't get those mixed up [Music] I can't say I know the feeling though I do hear choirs when I smell fresh coffee [Music] but this phenomenon isn't new many great artists throughout history have talked about this merging of the senses and how it affected their craft when they weren't busy turning nightmarish fever dreams into symphonies that is hey Berlioz want to hang out I cannot I must complete this vision of my fallen beloved gloating over my soul burning in eternal torment right tomorrow then so when singers like Billy Eilish talked about getting songs to look right and mine to create songs that sounds the way that velvet feels they're among those who pour their senses into art whether through song or paintings or works that merge sound and taste how could I make a song that sounds like the way that this light looks but what exactly causes these kinds of sensory overlaps and how did they affect the people who experience them let's take a look at a few cases and see what senses of theirs overlap and how they incorporate this phenomenon into their work but first in a minute I can't imagine why your last seven retired retired no he just broke Oh cute no a little morbid you mind if I get on with the disclaimer there Potts today's episode is exploring a neurological condition that affects about 4% of the population I'm not here to cast any judgement on anyone or the way they perceive the world only to explore the topic and discuss its effects from an unbiased perspective however you experience the world is great and whether or not you turn those experiences into something else is up to you with that out of the way let's get into it so what exactly is this mixing of the senses the term that describes this kind of experience is synesthesia which is a fancy science word that refers to a secondary sensation that accompanies a sensory reaction or but more simply when one of your senses reacts to another sense when learning the alphabet children are commonly taught to associate the letter A with on often red apple but what if anytime you saw the letter A you also experienced that red color or as musician Adam Neely put it I don't sense anything different about this a than you do I do however have a strongly colored this is known as grapheme-color synesthesia grapheme being a fancy word which here means the smallest unit of a writing system like a number or a letter which would make grapheme-color synesthesia a fancy phrase that refers to experiencing colors accompanying letters and numbers for people like Adam a page of fives and twos might look something like a field of blue and orange with the different numbers jumping out due to the colors they're associated with and that's just one form of synesthesia there are at least 73 reported forms possibly more the key thing that defines synesthesia is that these sensory connections are involuntary and automatic when one of the connected senses is activated the other turns on to synesthesia is defined as a neurological condition not a disability because put simply there's nothing wrong sure some synesthetes a term for a person who has synesthesia might have negative reactions to certain sensations but in the same way that you may dislike the taste of something you eat or dislike the scent of something you see smell I I mean smell all the same just because we might find our senses of distracting doesn't mean that we want to lose them could you imagine wine to lose our sight just because of the things we've seen not even I want that and I have seen things but in all my time I haven't seen anything quite like our first case today James way Norton is an artist from the United Kingdom who also happens to have a rare form of synesthesia which links his sense of hearing with taste the scientific phrase for this is lexical gustatory or word taste in English it's one of the rarest known forms of synesthesia and means that he can taste the words around him or in James's own words every sound I hear especially word sounds comes with an involuntary taste and texture experience attached James's describe the sensation like an eyedropper of flavours on his tongue appearing in a flash with each new word before fading away though it's a bit more than just a taste this is a real mouthfeel and not just a simple Association if I hear my dog bark I experience the taste and texture of runny custard in my mouth James's map is the culmination of his work mapping out the different taste experience riding the train through the London Underground London subway system as a child James took the tube as the locals call it to school and remembers the whine of the trains causing a strong taste of rhubarb never rub another man's rhubarb since then he's travelled through every stop on the system and kept notes on what the sound of each tasted like James completed at his map in 2013 which includes delicious sounding flavours like fresh peach and apple crumble alongside the more bizarre boiled egg and chocolate and downright disgusting ones like putrid meat as you may have guessed by some of those flavors there are certain downsides to this particular form of synesthesia namely how distracting it can be according to James it's quite difficult to travel anywhere because you get bombarded with tastes every time you read a road sign reading itself is problematic I have to speed read there's no way I can read each word and take it all in still it's not something that James would want to have taken away when asked if he would like to take part in a test on removing synesthesia for 20 minutes he turned it down I wouldn't have this have it taken away and it's a question I've office in states through the years myself and I've come across maybe one or two they find it that intrusive that they would align the rest from it here's a question for you what is your favorite song look like there's a few ways to answer this one an album cover Soundwave a music video personally I think my favorite song looks a little like this Oh check coats key using canons as an instrument use scoundrel what can I say blue once I can on I cannot can off [Laughter] is that your invoices now that's nests that's cool but how about something like this Melissa McCracken is an artist from Kansas City who paints the songs that she hears to create stunning color clouds visualizing the tones and instruments of music on canvas Melissa has three forms of synesthesia the first form we've covered already color grapheme associating letters with colors the second form is known as spatial sequence where numbers and dates are associated with a physical space the form of synesthesia that lends the color to Melissa's art is known as chroma Stasia or sound color synesthesia to her jazz music may include blues and whites Jimi Hendrix's guitar riffs are gold and pop songs contain bright pinks and purples like James Melissa originally thought this was something that everyone experienced which was only challenged when she found the perfect ringtone for her new blue slider phone for you younger viewers slider phones are what ancient civilizations used to send cat pictures to each other they're like smartphones but worse in every way except the sliding bit that's really fun so I turned to my friend and I said yes this song is perfect it's Orange it matches my blue phone perfectly and confused he said wait what do you mean it matches well at first she felt confused and alone Melissa soon realized she was anything but which brings us to [Music] yeah oh this is good look at them go who taught them Billy Eilish made waves at the age of 15 when she released the song ocean eyes on soundcloud in 2016 since then her songs are now heard by millions every day now I can't speak for all of the reasons why Billy Eilish exploded in popularity I'm not from the music biz so don't call my people I don't have any hello time is miles but one thing that even I can tell is that her songs have unique sound to them and that's no accident Billy describes the creation process she and her brother used to make songs as a visual one I think visually first with everything I do with every song comes a color a landscape a visual Billy's Annie is meant to be disorienting sounding the way that secondhand smoke looks and feels wait what hello grill is that you baby what do you want are you burning tweets in my garbage bin again my fault you can't set fires indoors that's extremely dangerous all right fine but I'm taking the pen with me yeah I would hope so oh you filming please to home hey everyone if you want more hot trash just play more where that came from on my channel grill where wheeze leave alright alright I'm out of here I'm going sorry about that folks so while Billy hasn't named the form of synesthesia she has we can make some connections her desire to put the look and feel of substances into music indicate an overlap between vision touch and sound and based on comments describing berry a friend as being dark colors she may have chromis Thessia Billy has even given us a look into her mind both with snippets of her notebook where she draws the way her songs sound and with the release event of her album when we all fall asleep where do we go this event was a full blown exhibition bringing attendees into Billy's mind with rooms tailored to have certain feels and looks bright green walls smoke and subwoofers under the floor and even one room that included actual puppets what's that oh oh poppies oh yeah puppies that makes sense because puppets are terrifying can I hate them those lifeless eyes staring at nothing it's nothing but lies they try to convince you that behind that void of expression there's some sort of consciousness but it's just nothing is that just what we all are and even one room that included actual puppies this isn't unusual in musician Pharrell Williams has talked about synesthesia and interviews and Lord has previously described how she sees her songs and colors describing the look of her album melodrama as the blues and violets featured prominently in its album's art in terms of how that affects her work Lorde described it as from the moment I start something I can see that finish song even if it's far off and foggy it's about getting the actual thing to sound like what I've been seeing so when an artist can pour a full sensory experience into a song is it any wonder that we find it captivating it's more than just a song it's a combined experience for them shared with us and when shared with us we can experience it too in a Test Professor Jamie Ward of the University of Sussex found that when presented with a song and a set of images people preferred images created by synesthetes when asked which image represented the song in fact it's believed that at one point we may have all had our senses linked in this way specifically when we were infants and our brains were just forming in an article for the psychologist professor Ward noted that everyone engages in perception across two senses watching this video involves sight and sound for example even though my voice is coming from your speakers or headset it looks like it's coming from my mouth there have even been recorded cases of acquired synesthesia which implies that these sensory connections may just be unused for all us non-synesthetes but why does synesthetes seem to skew towards creativity well as American synesthesia Association co-founder Carole Steen put it if you were surrounded by color all of your life and it really thrilled you wouldn't you want more of it but if you want something a bit more scientific yay science according to dr. vs Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego if you assume that this greater cross wiring and concepts also in different parts of the brain than those just where synesthesia occurs then it's going to create a greater propensity towards metaphorical thinking and creativity in people with synesthesia and hence the eight times more common incidence of synesthesia among poets artists and novelists how does Billy Eilish make songs that feel like velvet well simply put is because that's how she feels them and she uses her perception of to try and share that experience with us pans I'm at the end of the day I think that's pretty neat so the next time you hear a song that takes your breath away consider that maybe it's more than just a song to its creator calculation complete check up thanks putz it's hot you know I've never wondered if I have synesthesia only one way to find out Wow tastes black oh hey a video from grill I hope this won't room ID a musical genius

Channel: Brew

Views: 1,078,870

Rating: 4.9290938 out of 5

Keywords: color, illusion, perception, sensation, brain, color vision, solved mysteries, unsolved, unsolved mysteries, mysteries solved, solved mystery, investigation, investigate, theory, science, mysteries, mysteries unsolved, music, billie eilish, illusions, can you hear blue, hear colors, hearing colors, seeing sounds, synesthesia, medical conditions, billie eilish synesthesia

Id: WAQC12kAZ4E

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019

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