Wright State student sees sound, paints music

Photo by Anthony Powers of a bird flying and the sounds of its wings flapping.

The number one is orange. The letter “P” tastes like fish and chips. Electric guitars look like pouring Kool-Aid. Welcome to the world of synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that takes everything we know about the senses and turns it on its head.

Wright State University student Anthony Powers, a synesthete and an artist, is on a mission to make this uncommon experience available to a wider audience. Powers’ synesthesia-centric art show, “Why Are the Walls Screaming?” opens this Friday at the Yellow Springs Arts Council Gallery.

In neurological terms, synesthesia is defined as a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality. For instance, Powers’ synesthesia takes the form of sound-to-color synesthesia. When he hears a sound, it is accompanied by an image.

The synesthetic art that Powers has produced for his show is a riot of undulating lines, jagged stripes and bursts of color, but “it’s not abstract art,” he stresses. “It’s not abstract, or expressive or non-representational art. It is as close as I can get to a visual representation of things that I actually see when I actually hear.”

Photo by Anthony Powers: Powers’ synesthesia-centric art show, “Why Are the Walls Screaming?” opens this Friday at the Yellow Springs Arts Council Gallery.

Abstract art has always been confusing and sometimes unpleasant for Powers. He says that it often looks like sounds to him, and that the sounds rarely make sense.

“I didn’t like going into an art gallery and seeing something that looked like the cross between a sound that a dog barking through a straw would make, or something,” he says.

The name of the art show is a reference to an extremely unpleasant synesthetic experience Powers had in a drawing class while working on a piece of abstract art.

Non-synesthetes looking at Powers’ artwork may be surprised and intrigued by the images made by familiar sounds. One painting, a portrait of a child laughing, also shows the sounds made by children’s laughter. Around the happy child’s face, the canvas is brilliant with bubbles and splashes of rainbow colors. Another canvas, a depiction of Led Zeppelin’s song “Kashmir,” shows a jagged, rising line surrounded by swirling reds, purples and blues.

There are also graphite drawings of ambient sound, like birds, wind and the pump on a fish tank. The images roll and bristle over the paper, creating intricate soundscapes.

Other sounds are not so interesting to look at.

“I tried to do a synesthetic drawing of some heavy metal music,” says Powers, “and it was by far one of the least interesting drawings, synesthetically, that I’ve ever done.”

If synesthetic art is a strange new experience for most people, they can take comfort in knowing that it’s relatively new to Powers, too. Until recently, he had dedicated his drawings to representing the world as the majority of people see it, as accurately as possible.

But recently he has encountered more and more people who have shown interest in synesthesia. He says he enjoys teaching others about his unique point of view.

Photo by Anthony Powers: Powers’ synesthesia takes the form of sound-to-color synesthesia. When he hears a sound, it is accompanied by an image and that's what he paints and draws.

“It made me think that I wanted to go a step further than just explaining it to people. I wanted to try to make it more accessible,” he says. “Basically, it’s about outreach to people.”

While drawing and painting the sounds he sees might be new, Powers’ synesthesia has been with him since he was born. In second grade, when he tried to explain to his parents the different colors made by each letter of the alphabet, they realized there was something different about the way he saw things, and the family discovered synesthesia.

However, many synesthetes never realize that they’re different. Often, synesthetes assume that everyone experiences their senses the same way. As Powers puts it, you can’t get inside someone else’s head to compare notes.

“To some extent, what everybody experiences is integrated unto that person and is completely personal,” he says. But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong or crazy.

“”Not everybody sees ice cream come out of a piano when it’s being played,” he says. “It doesn’t mean that what I see is any less real.”

The curious will have a chance to get into Powers’ head at his art show “Why Are the Walls Screaming?” The show opens the evening of June 17 at the Yellow Springs Arts Council Gallery, 309 Xenia Ave., Yellow Springs, OH. For more information, visit www.ysartscouncil.org.