A Compositional Exploration of Auditory-Visual Synaesthesia

Anderson, Corin

Abstract

This thesis is an autoethnographic exploration of how my music composition practice is influenced by my auditory-visual synaesthesia. I perceive music as coloured and textured shapes – ‘photisms’ – in my mind’s eye. There are few first-person accounts of synaesthesia’s impact on music composition processes and outputs. The aim of the study is to investigate how my synaesthetic experiences affect the music I make, through the creation and analysis of an album of electronic music titled Photisms. The accompanying textual document employs an autoethnographic method proposed by Chang (2008), providing a first-person account of my own synaesthesia and analysing how it influences my composition processes and outputs. Firstly, I consider the impact timbre has on the shape and colour of my photisms. I discuss how various timbral transformation techniques can result in photism multiplication and emergence, and composite photisms (terms I have coined to define previously uninvestigated phenomena). Secondly, I explain how my photisms also appear to have texture and weight, and materialise as solid, liquid, gaseous, or plasma substances. The perceived weight and state of matter of musically-induced photisms is a formerly unexplored topic in academic literature. Thirdly, the spatiality and temporality of my synaesthetic visualisations of music are examined. I explain how the perceived location of my photisms can be defined using the Cartesian coordinate system, and how tempo and speed manipulation affect my synaesthetic experiences. Finally, I explain how, through a process of audiation, I can translate visual images into music by reverse-engineering my synaesthesia. This innovative approach to music-making has not previously been investigated. Through examination of these four areas, this study demonstrates how auditoryvisual synaesthetic experiences can affect, and be exploited in, the composition of electronic music.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 18, 2023
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2023.3170304
• Award Date: Jul 5, 2023