from lists of names to decades-old conversations, but he had great difficulty grasping abstract concepts. the automatic, and nearly permanent, retention of every detail due to synesthesia greatly inhibited shereshevsky's ability to understand what he read or heard. neuroscientist and author v.s. ramachandran studied the case of a grapheme–color synesthete who was also color blind. while he couldn't see certain colors with his eyes, he could still "see" those colors when looking at certain letters. because he didn't have a name for those colors, he called them "martian colors." art other notable synesthetes come particularly from artistic professions and backgrounds. synesthetic art historically refers to multi-sensory experiments in the genres of visual music, music visualization, audiovisual art, abstract film, and intermedia. distinct from neuroscience, the concept of synesthesia in the arts is regarded as the simultaneous perception of multiple stimuli in one gestalt experience. neurological synesthesia has been a source of inspiration for artists, composers, poets, novelists, and digital artists. writers vladimir nabokov wrote explicitly about synesthesia in several novels. nabokov described his grapheme–color synesthesia at length in his autobiography, speak, memory: i present a fine case of colored hearing. perhaps "hearing" is not quite accurate, since the color sensations seem to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while i imagine its outline. the long a of the english alphabet (and it is this alphabet i have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but the french a evokes polished ebony. this black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites. i am puzzled by my french on which i see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k. since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, i see q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. daniel tammet wrote a book on his experiences with synesthesia called born on a blue day. joanne harris, author of chocolat, is a synesthete who says she experiences colors as scents. her novel blueeyedboy features various aspects of synesthesia. painters and photographers wassily kandinsky (a synesthete) and piet mondrian (not a synesthete) both experimented with image–music congruence in their paintings. contemporary artists with synesthesia, such as carol steen and marcia smilack (a photographer who waits until she gets a synesthetic response from what she sees and then takes the picture), use their synesthesia to create their artwork. linda anderson, according to npr considered "one of the foremost living memory painters", creates with oil crayons on fine-grain sandpaper representations of the auditory-visual synaesthesia she experiences during severe migraine attacks. brandy gale, a canadian visual artist, experiences an involuntary joining or crossing of any of her senses – hearing, vision, taste, touch, smell and movement. gale paints from life rather than from photographs and by exploring the sensory panorama of each locale attempts to capture, select, and transmit these personal experiences. david hockney perceives music as color, shape, and configuration and uses these perceptions when painting opera stage sets (though not while creating his other artworks). kandinsky combined four senses: color, hearing, touch, and smell. composers the music of his "symphonic poem "the sea" (eventually skip to 0:45 seconds) and the matching painting "sonata of the sea. "finale" (1908) by synestheet - lithuanian painter, composer and writer mikalojus konstantinas čiurlionis. multiple composers had experienced synesthesia. mikalojus konstantinas čiurlionis, a lithuanian painter, composer and writer, perceived colors and music simultaneously. many of his paintings bear the names of matching musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes. alexander scriabin composed colored music that was deliberately contrived and based on the circle of fifths, whereas olivier messiaen invented a new method of composition (the modes of limited transposition) specifically to render his bi-directional sound–color synesthesia. for example, the red rocks of bryce canyon are depicted in his symphony des canyons aux étoiles... ("from the canyons to the stars"). new art movements such as literary symbolism, non-figurative art, and visual music have profited from experiments with synesthetic perception and contributed to the public awareness of synesthetic and multi-sensory ways of perceiving. other composers who reported synesthesia include duke ellington, nikolay rimsky-korsakov, and jean sibelius. several contemporary composers with a synesthesia are michael torke, and ramin djawadi, best known for his work on composing the theme songs and scores for such tv series as game of thrones, westworld and for the iron man movie. he says he tends to "associate colors with music, or music with colors." british composer daniel liam glyn created the classical-contemporary music project changing stations using grapheme colour synaesthesia. based on the 11 main lines of the london underground, the eleven tracks featured on the album represent the eleven main tube line colours. each track focuses heavily on the different speeds, sounds, and mood of each line, and are composed in the key signature synaesthetically assigned by glyn with reference to the colour of the tube line on the map. musicians the producer, rapper, and fashion designer kanye west is a prominent interdisciplinary case. in an impromptu speech he gave during an ellen interview, he described his condition, saying that he sees sounds, and that everything he sonically makes is a painting. other notable synesthetes include musicians billy joel,: 89, 91 andy partridge, itzhak perlman,: 53 lorde, billie eilish, brendon urie, ida maria, and brian chase; electronic musician richard d. james a.k.a. aphex twin (who claims to be inspired by lucid dreams as well as music); and classical pianist hélène grimaud. musician kristin hersh sees music in colors. drummer mickey hart of the grateful dead wrote about his experiences with synaesthesia in his autobiography drumming at the edge of magic. pharrell williams, of the groups the neptunes and n.e.r.d., also experiences synesthesia and used it as the basis of the album seeing sounds. singer/songwriter marina and the diamonds experiences music → color synesthesia and reports colored days of the week. awsten knight from waterparks has chromesthesia, which influences many of the band's artistic choices. artists without synesthesia some artists frequently mentioned as synesthetes did not, in fact, have the neurological condition. scriabin's 1911 prometheus, for example, is a deliberate contrivance whose color choices are based on the circle of fifths and appear to have been taken from madame blavatsky. the musical score has a separate staff marked luce whose "notes" are played on a color organ. technical reviews appear in period volumes of scientific american. on the other hand, his older colleague rimsky-korsakov (who was perceived as a fairly conservative composer) was, in fact, a synesthete. french poets arthur rimbaud and charles baudelaire wrote of synesthetic experiences, but there is no evidence they were synesthetes themselves. baudelaire's 1857 correspondances introduced the notion that the senses can and should intermingle. baudelaire participated in a hashish experiment by psychiatrist jacques-joseph moreau and became interested in how the senses might affect each other. rimbaud later wrote voyelles (1871), which was perhaps more important than correspondances in popularizing synesthesia. he later boasted "j'inventais la couleur des voyelles!" (i invented the colors of the vowels!). science some technologists, like inventor nikola tesla, and scientists also reported being synesthetic. physicist richard feynman describes his colored equations in his autobiography, what do you care what other people think?: "when i see equations, i see the letters in colors. i don't know why. i see vague pictures of bessel functions with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around." literature synesthesia is sometimes used as a plot device or way of developing a character's inner life. author and synesthete pat duffy describes four ways in which synesthetic characters have been used in modern fiction. synesthesia as romantic ideal: in which the condition illustrates the romantic ideal of transcending one's experience of the world. books in this category include the gift by vladimir nabokov. synesthesia as pathology: in which the trait is pathological. books in this category include the whole world over by julia glass. synesthesia as romantic pathology: in which synesthesia is pathological but also provides an avenue to the romantic ideal of transcending quotidian experience. books in this category include holly payne's the sound of blue and anna ferrara's the woman who tried to be normal. synesthesia as psychological health and balance: painting ruby tuesday by jane yardley, and a mango-shaped space by wendy mass. literary depictions of synesthesia are criticized as often being more of a reflection of an author's interpretation of synesthesia than of the phenomenon itself. research tests like this demonstrate that people do not attach sounds to visual shapes arbitrarily. when people are given a choice between the words "bouba" and "kiki", the left shape is almost always called "kiki" while the right is called "bouba" research on synesthesia raises questions about how the brain combines information from different sensory modalities, referred to as crossmodal perception or multisensory integration. an example of this is the bouba/kiki effect. in an experiment first designed by wolfgang köhler, people are asked to choose which of two shapes is named bouba and which kiki. the angular shape, kiki, is chosen by 95–98% and bouba for the rounded one. individuals on the island of tenerife showed a similar preference between shapes called takete and maluma. even 2.5-year-old children (too young to read) show this effect. research indicated that in the background of this effect may operate a form of ideasthesia. researchers hope that the study of synesthesia will provide better understanding of consciousness and its neural correlates. in particular, synesthesia might be relevant to the philosophical problem of qualia, given that synesthetes experience extra qualia (e.g., colored sound). an important insight for qualia research may come from the findings that synesthesia has the properties of ideasthesia, which then suggest a crucial role of conceptualization processes in generating qualia. technological applications synesthesia also has a number of practical applications, one of which is the use of 'intentional synesthesia' in technology. these applications include sensory prosthetics, as discussed by chaim-meyer scheff in "experimental model for the study of changes in the organization of human sensory information processing through the design and testing of non-invasive prosthetic devices for sensory impaired people". the voice (voice) peter meijer developed a sensory substitution device for the visually impaired called the voice (the capital letters "o," "i," and "c" in "voice" are intended to evoke the expression "oh i see"). the voice is a privately owned research project, running without venture capital, that was first implemented using low-cost hardware in 1991. the voice is a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device (ssd) preserving visual detail at high resolution (up to 25,344 pixels). the device consists of a laptop, head-mounted camera or computer camera, and headphones. the voice converts visual stimuli of the surroundings captured by the camera into corresponding aural representations (soundscapes) delivered to the user through headphones at a default rate of one soundscape per second. each soundscape is a left-to-right scan, with height represented by pitch, and brightness by loudness. the voice compensates for the loss of vision by converting information from the lost sensory modality into stimuli in a remaining modality.