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NEW from Leonardo Book Series and The MIT Press<o:p></o:p>
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<i style="">The Hidden Sense:
Synesthesia in Art and Science<o:p></o:p></i>
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by Cretien van Campen
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What does it mean to hear music in colors, to taste voices,
to see each letter of the alphabet as a different color? These uncommon
sensory
experiences are examples of synesthesia, when two or more senses
cooperate in
perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or
drug-induced
hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by
scans
of synesthetes' brains that show "crosstalk" between areas of the
brain that do not normally communicate. In <i style="">The
Hidden Sense</i>, Cretien van Campen explores synesthesia from both
artistic
and scientific perspectives, looking at accounts of individual
experiences,
examples of synesthesia in visual art, music, and literature, and
recent
neurological research. <br>
<br>
Van Campen reports that some studies define synesthesia as a brain
impairment,
a short circuit between two different areas. But synesthetes cannot
imagine
perceiving in any other way; many claim that synesthesia helps them in
daily
life. Van Campen investigates just what the function of synesthesia
might be
and what it might tell us about our own sensory perceptions. He
examines the
experiences of individual synesthetes--from Patrick, who sees music as
images
and finds the most beautiful ones spring from the music of Prince, to
the
schoolgirl Sylvia, who is surprised to learn that not everyone sees the
alphabet in colors as she does. And he finds suggestions of synesthesia
in the
work of Scriabin, Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Nabokov, Poe, and Baudelaire.<br>
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What is synesthesia? It is not, van Campen concludes, an audiovisual
performance, a literary technique, an artistic trend, or a metaphor. It
is,
perhaps, our hidden sense--a way to think visually; a key to our own
sensitivity.<br>
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Cretien van Campen is a social scientist at the Social and Cultural
Planning
Office of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Netherlands</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
He is the author of two books on perception and visual art. <br>
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October 2007<br>
The MIT Press<br>
A Leonardo Book<br>
ISBN:0-262-22081-4<br>
208 pp., 44 illus.
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