The Hidden Sense: On Becoming Aware of Synesthesia

Authors

  • Cretien van Campen Utrecht/Professor

Abstract

Synesthesia has received much attention in science, art and in particular in the overlapping fields of digital art and multimedia in the last decade (cf. Collopy 2000, Brougher et al. 2005, Ward 2008). Artists and scientists in these fields share a common interest in human perception. In the arts, synesthesia refers to a range of phenomena of simultaneous perception of two or more stimuli as one gestalt experience (van Campen 2007). In neuroscience, synesthesia is more strictly defined as “the elicitation of perceptual experiences in the absence of the normal sensory stimulation” (Ward & Mattingley 2006: 130).