Synesthetic Perception Research Articles

Discourse of trauma and transformation of memory in the novel of J. S. Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

The article is devoted to considering the peculiarities of trauma discourse in the context of dynamics and transformations of individual and collective memory based on the material of the novel by the modern American writer J. S. Foer “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. Sociocultural dynamics of the first quarter of the 21st century causes significant changes in the spheres of collective imagination and memory, which finds its expression in the literary discourse, one of the significant types of which is currently the discourse of trauma. In turn, the category of trauma acquires universal status in modern humanitarianism. This determines the relevance of the research topic. The purpose of the article is to consider the discursive specificity of J. S. Foer’s novel «Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close» in the context of trauma, individual and collective memory. The subject of consideration is the peculiarities of the representation of trauma in the context of the transformation of memory in the novel by J. S. Foer. The novelty of the study consists in the attempt to distinguish the discourse of trauma related to the peculiarities of the narrator’s vision of reality and the socio-cultural determinations of trauma that affect the entire society, that is, to isolate the universal discourse of social trauma in the novel compared to individual trauma. The task of the research: to analyse the specific features of the discourse of trauma in J. S. Foer’s novel; find out the correlation between trauma discourse and transformations of individual and collective memory; to justify the universal nature of the trauma discourse in the novel. Historical-cultural, hermeneutic and discursive methods were used in the research process. The discourse of trauma in the novel acquires universal features and concerns all the narrators of the novel, who form its plot. The visual component that forms the visual-symbolic narrative of the novel actualizes the synesthetic perception of the trauma and its totality, spread not only to the family of the main character, but also to the entire society. At the same time, the graphic and visual experiments and findings of the author allow us to interpret the text as a complex postmodern and metamodern whole. The trauma discourse in the novel captures the transformations of individual and collective memory, which are aimed at restoring the functionality of the existence of people and communities on both the cognitive and emotional-affective levels. The discourse of trauma acquires features of totality, while remaining rational and avoiding signs of self-obsession, which enables catharsis as life after and with trauma. The symbolic nature of the processes taking place in the collective consciousness and imagination represents itself through the transformations of discourse, which record the transformations of memory. Prospects for further research are outlined by the possibility of considering the discourse of trauma in a wider cultural, linguistic and sociological context.

ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION OF SYNAESTHESIA CONCEPT IN MODERN PRODUCT DESIGN

AbstractObjective To analyze and discuss the application of synaesthesia theory in modern product design and emphasize the important position and necessity of synaesthesia in modern product design. Methods Based on the concept of synesthesia, the value, significance and design principles of synesthesia in modern product design were further analyzed and summarized through the study of concrete examples of shape, color, material and using methods. Conclusion When the concept of synesthesia is applied to product design, it can enhance the expressive force of products, realize users' synesthetic perception, mobilize users' senses to give psychological suggestions, meet users' various psychological needs, and bring users a richer physical and mental experience.

The Relationship Between Music-Related Types of Synesthesia and Mental Imagery in Synesthete Musicians

Synesthesia is a perceptual and conceptual phenomenon that has been linked to a heightened capacity for mental imagery. However, our understanding of music-related types of synesthesia and mental imagery is still in its infancy. This study therefore aims to examine the relationship between music-related types of synesthesia and mental imagery in a sample of synesthete musicians. Four forms of data collection were employed: an online survey, a synesthesia test battery, an absolute pitch test, and a semi-structured interview. This article focuses on results obtained in response to open-ended questions relating to synesthete musicians’ mental imagery. An analysis of the interview data revealed heightened vividness of auditory imagery (AI), including the ability to control the speed, dynamics, and intensity of the imagery. A bidirectional analysis of the functional relationship between AI and synesthesia ascertained that multimodal mental imagery (MMI) could be triggered by AI, thus bypassing the need for sensory stimulation. Furthermore, cases of complex visual imagery (CVI) were confirmed to meet the synesthetic criteria of being automatic and involuntary, as well as being consistent and stable mappings between specific musical stimuli and CVI. These findings are noteworthy as they call into question the general assumption that synesthetic percepts are generic and simple in nature. Together, these findings contribute to our understanding of music-related types of synesthesia and mental imagery, challenge contemporary understanding of certain categorical aspects of music-related synesthetic percepts, and provide us with a deeper understanding of the nature of cross-modal associations in general.

Subtitled speech: Phenomenology of tickertape synesthesia

With effort, most literate persons can conjure more or less vague visual mental images of the written form of words they are hearing, an ability afforded by the links between sounds, meaning, and letters. However, as first reported by Francis Galton, persons with ticker-tape synesthesia (TTS) automatically perceive in their mind's eye accurate and vivid images of the written form of all utterances which they are hearing. We propose that TTS results from an atypical setup of the brain reading system, with an increased top-down influence of phonology on orthography. As a first descriptive step towards a deeper understanding of TTS, we identified 26 persons with TTS. Participants had to answer to a questionnaire aiming to describe the phenomenology of TTS along multiple dimensions, including visual and temporal features, triggering stimuli, voluntary control, interference with language processing, etc. We also assessed the synesthetic percepts elicited experimentally by auditory stimuli such as non-speech sounds, pseudowords, and words with various types of correspondence between sounds and letters. We discuss the potential cerebral substrates of those features, argue that TTS may provide a unique window in the mechanisms of written language processing and acquisition, and propose an agenda for future research.

Синий цветозвук в фильме: из глубины к свету

The article highlights the techniques of creating a colour-sound cinematic image on the example of the use of one colour, blue, in the films where it is not only the dominant one on the colour palette but, along with sound, becomes an important element of a complex semantic structure. In our case, the blue colour dynamically changing on the screen and interacting with the sound contributes to the expression of the semantic layering of the film drama and its synesthetic perception by the viewer. The author is more interested in the analysis of the blue in the films where it is not just seen as a colour marker of the different (world, space, character, subjective state of the character, etc.) but becomes involved, in its multiple coloristic nuances, in the dynamics of the development of the film narrative and the change (transformation) of a character’s inner world. Considering the achievements and prospects of modern audio-visual technologies, it is the development of a common colour and music solution for both an episode and the overall aesthetic form of the film that can become most effective and relevant. The main material for representing this kind of colour and sound interaction is two films: Three Colours: Blue directed by K. Keslevsky (1993) and Tree of Life directed by T. Malik (2011). For the directors, the depth of immersion and the height of ascent into the blue are not just a metaphor or a local device, but a way to convey a complex film drama and express their worldview and main aesthetic principles. The philosophical, aesthetic and methodological basis for the film analysis is some theses from the theoretical works on colour and sound by S.M. Eisenstein, J.W. Goethe, V.V. Kandinsky, L. Wittgenstein, M. Pastoureau and Jan Baleka, as well as the approaches of philosophical dialogism, hermeneutical and receptive aesthetics.

Голос операционной системы в фильме Спайка Джонза «Она» как гиперреальный объект любви

The article raises the topic of “new sensuality” (“new sensualism”) as a phenomenon that revived the sentimentalism of the 1960s movie drama in the computer age and was embodied in a number of films of the last decade. In such films as Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Ex machina (dir. Alex Garland, 2015), I’m Here (dir. Spike Jonze, 2010) robots, replicant androids, and even laser projections act as men and women; and in the Spike Jonze film Her (2013), the main character, although a real man named Theodore, falls in love with the voice of the operating system Samantha, an affair with which becomes more real and valuable for him than anything he has previously experienced in relationships with real women. The plot of the film provides the basis for further practical and theoretical development of the film image of “akousmêtre”, a voice without a body. Digital technologies embodied in the film provide an opportunity to apply and rethink the concept of corporeality, which is relevant in phenomenological aesthetics, as well as to develop the meaning of synesthetic perception in the modern art space. At a new level of correlation between reality and virtuality, the ideas of dialogism that developed within the framework of philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century can be applied in the analysis of the film. Thus, the material of the presented films allows us to expand the art history discourse and raise a number of issues that are relevant not only for the screen arts of the 21st century, but also for people living in the world of digital technologies, but who have not lost the need for genuine human feelings.

The Texture of Type: Nabokov’s Sensory Perception of Alphabetical Letters: The Semanticized Graphic Form

ABSTRACT My paper investigates how Nabokov’s synesthetic perception of typographic letters as images was expanded into a special letter-coding semanticizing practice and discusses the important questions raised by this strategy with regard to the theory and practice of literary analysis. I argue that Nabokov reconceives and expands his biologically determined binary (letter-with-color) synesthetic associations in a cross- and self-referential system of motifs permeating the whole oeuvre. Consciously controlling his personal experience of his synesthetic mind, Nabokov extrapolates it by adding images and objects and how in this artistic method he attaches symbolic or emblematic notions to letters through color- and object-associations. This complex meaning of letters can be unfolded from supporting codes, metaphors and motifs that trigger adequate contextual interpretations. His prose invites the same meticulous text-decoding methodology demanded by Symbolist and avant-garde prose art that helps to discover a similar segment in the theory of art of these two literary tendencies reputed as antithetical. 1 1 The article was written in the framework of the project “The Border Zone Paradigm: Crossroads in Culture” (2018–2020) funded by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research (No. 18–512–23002).

Reduced perceptual narrowing in synesthesia

Synesthesia is a neurologic trait in which specific inducers, such as sounds, automatically elicit additional idiosyncratic percepts, such as color (thus "colored hearing"). One explanation for this trait-and the one tested here-is that synesthesia results from unusually weak pruning of cortical synaptic hyperconnectivity during early perceptual development. We tested the prediction from this hypothesis that synesthetes would be superior at making discriminations from nonnative categories that are normally weakened by experience-dependent pruning during a critical period early in development-namely, discrimination among nonnative phonemes (Hindi retroflex /d̪a/ and dental /ɖa/), among chimpanzee faces, and among inverted human faces. Like the superiority of 6-mo-old infants over older infants, the synesthetic groups were significantly better than control groups at making all the nonnative discriminations across five samples and three testing sites. The consistent superiority of the synesthetic groups in making discriminations that are normally eliminated during infancy suggests that residual cortical connectivity in synesthesia supports changes in perception that extend beyond the specific synesthetic percepts, consistent with the incomplete pruning hypothesis.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD'UN "SESLİLER" ŞİİRİNDE DUYULAR VE YARATICI BİLİNÇ

In this study, it is aimed to analyze the French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Vowels” through senses. Therefore, the borderlines of an approach which is formed in the frame of cognitive stylistics, also including phenomenological and synesthetic perception is defined. Synesthesia is considered as a phenomenon that transcends senses with its effect on altered states of consciousness, as well as the perception which takes place between and through senses. Because of the approach to consciousness from a different perspective in the phenomenology, the factors affecting and building the poet’s consciousness are taken into consideration in the stage of analysis. And the altered states of consciousness of the poet, his conflicting moods, the reflections on the language of his tides between the physical and spiritual universe, and his cognitive difference make it appropriate to employ cognitive stylistics as a method, all of these also provide crucial clues about how the poet interferes with cognitive processes. The figure-ground relationship is considered in cognitive, phenomenological and synesthetic context; when the subject is poetry, it is pointed out that in which area this relationship is revealed and how it is interpreted. As a result, it is shown that a poem can be analyzed through senses, however, it is observed that senses and the relationships between senses affect the language in connection with both consciousness and mood.

ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ СИНЕСТЕЗИИ И ОСОБЕННОСТИ СИНЕСТЕТИЧЕСКОГО ВОСПРИЯТИЯ НЕСЛЫШАЩИХ

The article is devoted to synesthesia, its study from the point of view of psychology and neuropsychology, features of synesthetic perception and importance of synesthesia for deaf people. The author refers to the works of modern researchers of synesthesia in the field of psychology and neuropsychology and examines various types of synesthetic reactions and associations. Synesthesia researchers study this phenomenon comprehensively, in the sensoryperceptual- cognitive continuum. Synesthetic stimuli and reactions are related to perception and can be considered in terms of its emotional component. It is emphasized that synesthesia affects the individual’s memory, in particular, A. R. Luria, who investigated the phenomenon of synesthesia, believes that synesthetic sensations contribute to better memorization of information, especially perceived from hearing. A. R. Luria notes that at hearing perception of a word, its phonetic component remains on the last place, and the dominant meaning is semantic. In synesthesia, a brighter visual and auditory image is attached to the perception of meaning. When memorizing, the visual component of the image remains the leading one. For deaf people, the meaning itself, perceived with the help of sign language, is already assigned to the visual component. But this is not always a visual image. The author refers to the testimonies of deaf people, who describe their synesthetic experience, showing that the absence of hearing is not an obstacle to the perception of sound, which can be felt by other senses, touch and vision.

ВЕЛИКИЕ ЛЮДИ, СТРАДАЮЩИЕ ЗАБОЛЕВАНИЯМИ УХА. ПРИОБРЕТЕННАЯ АКУСТИЧЕСКАЯ СЕНСОРНАЯ ДЕПРИВАЦИЯ И СПОСОБНОСТИ ЛЮДЕЙ ЧАСТЬ 1.Б. ВЕЛИКИЕ КОМПОЗИТОРЫ

Auditory sensory deprivation is a phenomenon characterized by a significant decrease or complete subsidence in sending external sound information through the organ of hearing to the human brain. Various infectious diseases, vascular pathology, genetic abnormalities, and intoxication conditions may lead to various diseases of the ear and, as a consequence, to hearing loss or deafness. The second part of the paper covers the biographical data of such composers as Agathe Backer Grøndahl, Aleksandr A. Kasyanov, Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie. The paper assesses the development of auditory sensory deprivation with the onset of deafness and shows the influence of auditory sensory deprivation and the psychological state of composers on the results of their creative activity. The author compares the internal crisis, mental destabilization, and the lack of sound perception with the effective implementation of musical experience, which allowed the composers to create great musical works, despite their pathological condition. In addition, the paper points out the possibility to continue effective creative activity and give live musical performances due to the sense of ‘feeling’ the vibrations and the ability to develop and use it in a proper way (Evelyn Glennie). Synesthetic perception is revealed through the given work.

Современный визуальный дидактический регулятив в проекте «Жизнь замечательных мелодий»

The article presents a searching-experimental Project “The Life of Remarkable Melodies” (“LRM”), the conception of which is based on the application of the didactic principle of multidimensionality to the phenomenon of the “musical image” in the form of specially selected and ranged creative arrangements and performances of remarkable melodies in assembly works — mono-anthologies, as well as on the technology of comparative music listening. According to the latter, the listener — the User of the “LRM” Project — intuitively emphasizes the distinctive features of the arrangement and specifies his or her preferences. The peculiarity of the “LRM” Project is in the convenient multipage interface and the exclusive title included in the text of Testimonial RU 2018612220: Instructional Program Complex “The Life of Remarkable Melodies.” For the aggrandizement of demonstrativeness, the article makes use of didactic means of figurative visualization of knowledge, which would initiate a synesthetic perception of depicted informative and operative components, facilitating the process of operating it in the teaching process. In particular, a visual didactic directive is introduced of the logical-semantic type, the “Self-Effectivity of the User of the LRM Project,” obtained by modeling information presented in a natural language. It realizes the conception of construction of semantic networks, moreover, the figurative form of the directive is provided by the graphics of a “solar” — radial type.

Synesthetic Devices: Electroactive Soft Photonic Devices for the Synesthetic Perception of Color and Sound (Adv. Mater. 2/2019)

Synesthetic Devices: Electroactive Soft Photonic Devices for the Synesthetic Perception of Color and Sound (Adv. Mater. 2/2019)

МУЗИЧНІСТЬ ПОЕТИЧНОГО СЛОВА М. ВОРОНОГО

The publication considers musicality as a notable feature of M. Voronyi's poetic work, primarily due to the attraction of modernism to the renewal of the form. The fa ctors that influenced the formation of M. Voronyi as a virtuoso of melodic poetry were determined. Among the most important factors was the folk-song tradition, the euphony of the Ukrainian language. Also noted is a special author's synesthetic perception. Creating an unsurpassed melodic lyric poet M. Voroyi is helped by awareness of the creativity of European modernists. The imaginative system of poetry is analyzed and a number of thematically musical images (songs, singers, prayers, musical instruments) are singled out. The evolution of M. Voronyi's technique in poetry is considered. The sources of musicality of the poet's phrase are revealed through the study of stylistic means of euphony.

Electroactive Soft Photonic Devices for the Synesthetic Perception of Color and Sound.

Color, as perceived through the eye, transcends mere information in the visible range of electromagnetism and serves as an agent for communication and entertainment. Mechanochromic systems have thus far only aimed at satisfying the sense of vision and have overlooked the possibility of generating acoustic vibrations in concert with their visual color responses that would enable the simultaneous satisfaction of the auditory system. Transcending the boundaries of the two senses (i.e., sound and color), herein a strategy for their concurrent and synesthetic fulfillment is elucidated by electrically actuating an organogel photonic device, controlled by a single input signal. This new class of devices that integrate a color module with a speaker is fabricated from a mechanochromic layer that comprises close-packed photonic lattice with an organogel matrix pervading the void fraction. Exploiting a dielectric elastomer actuator, the system's mechanical response permits the simultaneous, yet independent, exploration of visible-light reflection alongside audible sound-wave generation. Large areal strains at low frequencies of actuation tune the photonic stop-band, whereas the layer remains incompressible and exhibits negligible strain when actuated at higher frequencies (e.g., tens of Hz), thereby making it amenable to modulate sound and color simultaneously yet independently.

Sound-Color and Phono-Semantic Analysis of Literary Poetic Text by Synesthets

The article is concerned with investigating the problem of synesthesia that manifests itself in the fact that stimulation in one sensory-based system or cognitive system that leads to automatic reaction in another one. This article is the continuation of the research published in the previous one (Еливанова, Семушина, 2017) in which we described statistically significant sound / alphabet letters-color and words-color correlations typical for synesthets. Тhe aim of the next stage was to research synesthets’ capability of sound-color and phono-semantic analysis of a poetic text. Phonosemantics is a Russian branch of linguistic, its subject matter is sounds that create images. 12 synesthets took part in the research at the first stage. We offered them to analyze a piece of poetry “Grasshopper” by V. Hlebnikov (В. Хлебников). We revealed that synesthets have different capabilities of sound-color analysis of a literary poetic text that manifest individual and typological specifics of sound-color capability. 2 (16.7%) of examined respondents who have artistic type of higher nervous function with its high potential color-sound language system are good at intuitive phono-semantic analysis of a poetic text. Then we offered 3 curated synesthets extracts of poetry by А. Блок, А. Белый and Edgar Allan Poe (in original and in the translation by 3 different Russian poets). Analysis showed that individual method of synesthets partly coincides with the method of automatical analysis that is based on letter occurrence frequency in a text. Synesthets do not necessarily feel colors of frequent letters / sounds that have not equal meaning for the color perception of words and the text as a whole. Synesthesia specifics combined with emotional image reflection of color-sound of analyzed texts let synesthets intuitively decode motivation coded with the help of phonetic means of language in the text by the authors of poems. In spite of individual variability of synesthetic perception of a text there is phono-semantic general invariability that is caused by imaginative comprehension of sound-color of poetic texts.

ИНСТРУМЕНТАЛЬНОЕ ТВОРЧЕСТВО ИРКУТСКОГО КОМПОЗИТОРА А. ТЕПЛЯКОВА: СИНЕСТЕТИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

In the article, the practical analysis of the synesthetic perception of the musical text by the example of the instrumental creative work of Irkutsk composer A. Teplyakov is carried out. The biographical data of Anatolii Innokent'evich and the interpretation of his compositions are presented. The main direction of the author’s works is musical antiquity and avant-garde. Synesthetic thinking is represented in seven piano pieces for eight hands, in the piano cycle “Notes from the Net Diary” (25 pieces for children and youth), in the film fantasy “Self-Portrait” (in seven parts for chamber orchestra, percussion and brass). In the synesthetic aspect, “Triptych for Organ”, the film music by A. Teplyakov “The Son of the Leader”, “The Privy Councillor” are of interest.

SYNESTHETIC ARTISTIC PERCEPTION IN THE ERA OF POST LITERACY

In the era of post-literacy, the development of information technology and the technological basis of art as well as the mechanisms of not only artistic creativity, but also its perception, change. The transformation peculiarities of artistic perception of the new polymorphic and multimedia art require their scientific and theoretical comprehension in the conditions of post-literacy that have developed in the last 50 years. In this case, we are interested in the nuances characterizing the changes in artistic cultural perception caused by the emergence of new polymorphic texts in their linguistic nature and originated in the process of synesthetic artistic creativity with the use of multimedia technologies. In the process of analyzing the characteristics of the transformations of contemporary artistic perception, the authors rely on the principles of the synesthetic approach, formulated in its foundations by the outstanding Russian scientist Bulat Galeev as well as the historical and morphological approach to art developed by another respected Russian philosopher, Moses Kagan. The authors reveal such factors of development in art languages and art perception as the culture-centrism of contemporary art practices, the influence of virtual reality technology and the synesthetic sensuality of audiences. During the research, it was established that new artistic languages are formed on the basis of the classical art languages, through their synthesis, synesthetic interaction, or an intermediate combination of both. The artistic perception of projects created with the help of new artistic languages, complex perceptual associativity, and imagination allow the synesthetic perception of polymorphic and multimedia texts. In conclusions, the authors contend that perception of third-millennium art presupposes a synesthetic dominant expressing the features characterizing the transformation of contemporary art languages

Cronenberg’s anesthetics (virtual flesh)

This essay investigates the marked disappearance of body horror elements in David Cronenberg’s films since A History of Violence (2005). While the absence of body horror’s conventional iconography is undeniable in Cronenberg’s recent cinema, I contest that this disappearance signals a departure from his longstanding investment in the politics and spectacular possibilities of flesh. By developing Jacques Derrida’s discussion of contemporary capital punishment’s ‘anesthesial logic’ in The Death Penalty Vol. 1, the essay contends that Cronenberg’s apparently fleshless cinema functions anesthetically whereby his avoidance of the shocking iconography that characterizes his archive does not signal its complete erasure. Rather than eradication, anesthetics redirect the anticipated avenues of synesthetic transmission and perception; in Cronenberg’s cinema, they generate an unseen or virtual encounter with the fleshiness distinguishing the ‘Cronenbergian’ signature. The essay begins its discussion of ‘Cronenberg’s anesthetics’ through an analysis of the short video, The Nest (2014), and then proceeds to identify how this mode of concealment functions throughout his films since 2005.

Implicit synesthetic perception in lexical processing(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 29th Annual Meeting)

Implicit synesthetic perception in lexical processing(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 29th Annual Meeting)