Explainer | Synaesthesia – from Kanye West to Sting and Van Gogh, how ‘hearing’ colours and ‘tasting’ sounds has helped artists and other creative people
- A neurological condition that mixes the senses, synaesthesia allows sufferers to smell or hear colours and taste sounds, noises and locations
- Artists from Van Gogh to David Hockney and singers from Kanye West to Lady Gaga have used their synaesthesia to their advantage in their work
Burned rubber. Evaporated milk. Pea and ham soup. Crumbly Cheshire cheese.
No, it’s not the menu of some avant-garde molecular restaurant, but the flavours James Wannerton “tastes” when riding through subway stations on the London Underground network. (In that order, those stations are Bermondsey, Queensway, Green Park and Old Street).
Wannerton is a synaesthete, a person with synaesthesia, who experiences a kind of blending of the senses. When one sense is activated, a different aspect of it, or another sense entirely, is also triggered.
For some, this can result in “hearing” colours or “tasting” sounds. A common sensory link is between things, such as numbers or dates, and particular colours – such as two with blue or March with green.
The neurological condition, in which two or more of the five senses are “cross-wired”, occurs in about 4 per cent of the population.
The true figure could be much higher, since the experience of synaesthesia is subjective and the numbers are from self-referrals. It is frequently confused with social disorders such as autism.
