Synesthesia in Action

This is pretty cool -- and the creator left a good description of what he is trying to do:

If it were not for youtube, I wouldn't have bothered creating this. At least here, there is the possibility someone may stumble across it.

Here is some synesthesia for you. This was an attempt to visualize some of the abstract noise that goes on inside my head when listening to music. At first blush, it may not seem that different from a software visualizer. Unfortunately, visualizers are bound by the analysis of a stereo mix. While a it may extract information from certain frequency ranges, it can't really tell a clarinet from a duduk and represent each discretely. Here, each element has its own visual counterpart.

I read that some people lack the ability to distinguish the individual parts of a piece of music clearly. This blew my mind. Perhaps it will help others hear music in a different way, or grasp some of the more subtle interplay of the individual parts.

The music is Dissociative Fugue by Archetribe.

Tags: music, synesthesia, psychology, art