[Leonardo/ISAST Network] The Hidden Sense, by Cretien van Campen - NOW AVAILABLE from the Leonardo Book Series

[Leonardo/ISAST]

NEW from Leonardo Book Series and The MIT Press
 
/The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science/
by Cretien van Campen
 
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 /The Hidden Sense/, 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.

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.

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.

Cretien van Campen is a social scientist at the Social and Cultural 
Planning Office of the Netherlands. He is the author of two books on 
perception and visual art.

October 2007
The MIT Press
A Leonardo Book
ISBN:0-262-22081-4
208 pp., 44 illus.
 
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Book Series visit the Leonardo Book Series website at: 
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