“Synesthesia” means one sensory experience described in terms of another sensory experience, such as hearing colors or seeing notes. When I was a kid and learning arithmetic, I would get confused and think “5+2=green” or “5+4=purple”. But just as we memorize multiplication tables, I memorized 5+2=7. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I knew there was a name for my confusion (there’s even a sub-genre called “grapheme” for perceiving numbers or letters as inherently colored). I still occassionally get confused though, and as I was printing my latest wood type collage, I noticed that I was thinking of number pairs in terms of colors. So “synesthesia” seemed like a good title for this one.
Math would have been more pleasing to me if I’d been able to associate numbers with colors.
What a beautiful pile of figures you’ve created.
I’m relatively new to letterpress. I’ve only been practicing a couple years, but I love it. Your blog is so interesting and this broadside is gorgeous!
A little late I know, but… I came across this post when I did a synesthesia search on Etsy… Nice to know of someone else with it! I love your number print! I’m working on some ink paintings based on synesthesia…
I’m going to use this post on Synesthesia in my magazine, Wellthy Choices.
I too have synesthesia (I see music notes in color, especially if there’s a saxophone playing in ANY music). I’m doing an on-going series about Synesthesia in my magazine and this will go in issue #2 – Sept.-Oct. 2010. Should be available online in the next couple of days! (by Sept. 8th).