Synaesthesia — the neurological crossover of senses — underpins the historical colour music and visual music traditions

Synaesthesia is the neurological condition where stimulation of one sense automatically triggers perception in another — hearing colours, seeing sounds. Artists from Kandinsky to Scriabin explored voluntary or symbolic equivalences between musical pitch, timbre, and colour hue, saturation, and value. This tradition (colour organs, Kandinsky’s paintings, Scriabin’s Prometheus) positioned audiovisual performance as a natural, even scientific, fusion of senses rather than an arbitrary coupling. Contemporary live cinema practitioners inherit this framing: the music-visuals relationship is seen as potentially unified, not merely decorative.

Examples

Scriabin’s Prometheus (1908) used a ‘colour keyboard’ to project light synchronized to orchestral parts; Kandinsky associated tone with timbre, hue with pitch, saturation with volume.

Assessment

Explain why the synaesthesia concept was historically important for validating AV performance as an art form rather than entertainment. Does it still matter for contemporary practice?