What colour is your voice?
Any ideas which famous female singer's voice this might represent?
Radio 4 listener, Philip Howell, emailed iPM suggesting we look at the work of Philippa Stanton who has synesthesia. It's a neurological condition in which one sense is involuntarily translated into another, for example sounds being experienced as colours and vice versa.
This led me to an interesting post on a blog called Wishful Thinking that makes connections between synesthesia and creativity. And an endearing short documentary about a young American boy with the condition.
I'm wondering what colour Radio 4 is and how Philippa would paint Eddie's voice?
UPDATE - Philippa brought her paint pots into the Radio 4 newsroom on Tuesday 13 November. She spoke to Eddie about her synesthesia and painted his voice (above).
She also painted an impression of our chattering voices at an iPM production meeting -
To give us the background to this condition we spoke to Dr Jamie Ward, Senior Psychology Lecturer at the University of Sussex, who tries to answer Lorna's question on how many people in the UK are thought to have synesthesia.
The Synesthesia Research Centre at the university has a Q&A on the condition and reveals why synaesthetes' brains are different and why they are more likely to be left-handed.
There's also an interesting talk from Neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran called A journey to the center of your mind, on the Ted (Technology, Entertainment, Design) website. It is a broader speech about our minds, but includes synesthesia.
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Comments
Bizarrely, I guessed it was Shirley Bassey, intuitive or a fluke? Radio 4 is British Racing Green, Eddie's voice is of course tartan.
FYI, a common form of synaesthesia is experienced by most of us when we read. A sensation of squiggly marks received by the optic nerve results in the sounds of the human voice in our brain.....
http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/misogyny.html#reading
Just thought it might be helpful.
xx
ed
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups --
alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
-- Alex Levine
To my mind there's a lot of purples, plums and berry colours in Radio 4; Eddie? Well, I would say aubergine....
Dear Eddie,
I have synesthesia, (a normal condition as far as i am aware) and you have the most delightfully silvery blue voice. Starting as silver blue velvet, emainating outwards to a deeper, then eventually navy blue. Thankyou for your broadecasts, your voice colour enhances my appreciation of your humour and sincerity in your programmes.
Look forward to hearing you again!
Annie
Eddie's voice, uncannily, seems to reflect the iPM colour scheme.
I've got synesthesia, but without hearing Eddie's voice as I write this I've got no idea what colour/texture it is. Besides, don't most people with the condition find every specific word has a colour property, rather than a stream of words sounding from one person (in this case Eddie's) mouth?
A colleague of mine asked me recently if I was partially deaf, because I seem to cock my head to one side and look as if I'm concentrating when I speak to someone. I said no, but I had a "thing" where everything I heard was visualised in vivid colours, shapes and textures, so occasionally it proved a bit distracting and I would have to make an extra effort to focus on one stream of subtitles sounding from one mouth - in this case, hers.
She said, "Oh my goodness, you have synesthesia?"
"Yes," I said, surprised, "You've heard of it?"
"Yes of course, she said, "I love science fiction."
We're not aliens, I thought to myself. But it is odd how some people respond to it, if you hazard an explanation of the wonderfully weird way you perceive the world. I thought it was totally normal until I was about eight years old, because my brother Seth (10) also had it. We'd go through different words, such as week days, "school", our names etc, comparing colours.
"Lets go and find out what Mum's colours are," I suggested.
But she didn't know what we were talking about and for a few minutes wondered whether she'd been subjected to a satanic conception, along the lines of Rosemary's Baby. Nobody else in the family appeared to have it.
We called it the "colours" thing until a Horizon documentary a few years later illuminated just what the condition was.
The jury's out on just how many people have synesthesia, though. Figures seem to vary from 1 in 1500 to 1 in 8,000 people. Does anybody have a better idea?