Here’s what “Get Lucky” and “Gangnam Style” look like to someone who sees music

By William Hughes  |  June 10, 2014 | 2:15pm
Aux Features Music

Synesthesia, the neurological phenomenon that causes sensory information to trigger responses in seemingly unrelated systems—like, say, the perception that certain numbers or words carry intrinsic colors—has long fascinated both the psychological and artistic communities. For years, artists, both synesthetes and otherwise, have attempted to convey the internal experiences of the phenomenon to viewers.

Reddit user andrewmn8 has a variant of synesthesia known as chromesthesia—an involuntary perception of sounds and music as bursts of color. He’s applied this condition, and his own (admittedly limited) artistic gifts to answer an interesting question: What do different songs look like to someone who “sees” music?  The result is this series of six images, depicting a chromesthesic response to music from, among others, Phoenix and Daft Punk, as well as, inevitably, Gangnam Style.

While one of the defining features of synesthesia is that it manifests itself differently in every individual, meaning that there is no one single way people with chromesthesia would see these songs, it’s still an interested window into a colorful world. You can see rest of the images in this gallery, and read a thread where andrewmn8 talks about his experiences and discusses taking requests to draw more songs in the future here.

 
Join the discussion...