Perceived as a kind of disease formerly, synesthesia is a magical feeling. Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese visual and sound artist, always combining visual arts with audio sounds in a “raw” state, that is, a way which is easy for viewers to understand and feel. Although he is not an artist famous for synesthesia, his personal mindset and his artworks do show the complex feeling among different senses. On the basis of the combination of visual arts with great contrast in color and shapes and audios like sine tones and noise, which is no doubt a kind of genuine synesthesia, his concept of “raw” state offers his viewers a direct emotional impact which will not be easy to forget.
As is written in the article, volume and pitch are frequently connected with size and brightness (Emrich, Neufeld & Sinke, p. 417). Ryoji’s artworks are great illustrations for this idea, and he then brings these connections between sounds and visual art up to something that can affect one’s emotion and memories, which is both the significance and also my personal view of this artifact. Because from Ryoji’s artworks, I think senses are divided into different levels, from simply connecting visual sense with auditory sense to affecting the emotion by these connections made before, which is a kind of magical feeling, as well as “a genuine neurophysiological phenomenon that can provide science with unique insights into human perception” (Emrich, Neufeld & Sinke, p. 420).
References
Emrich, Hinderk M., Janina Neufeld & Christopher Sinke. Synesthesia, a
Neurological Phenomenon. 415-423