Coloured hearing, colour music, colour organs, and the search for perceptually meaningful correspondences between colour and sound

Abstract

There has long been interest in the nature of the relationship(s) between hue and pitch or, in other words, between colour and musical/pure tones, stretching back at least as far as Newton, Goethe, Helmholtz, and beyond. In this narrative historical review, we take a closer look at the motivations that have lain behind the various assertions that have been made in the literature concerning the analogies, and possible perceptual similarities, between colour and sound. During the last century, a number of experimental psychologists have also investigated the nature of the correspondence between these two primary dimensions of perceptual experience. The multitude of different crossmodal mappings that have been put forward over the centuries are summarized, and a distinction drawn between physical/structural and psychological correspondences. The latter being further sub-divided into perceptual and affective categories. Interest in physical correspondences has typically been motivated by the structural similarities (analogous mappings) between the organization of perceptible dimensions of auditory and visual experience. Emphasis has been placed both on the similarity in terms of the number of basic categories into which pitch and colour can be arranged and also on the fact that both can be conceptualized as circular dimensions. A distinction is drawn between those commentators who have argued for a dimensional alignment of pitch and hue (based on a structural mapping), and those who appear to have been motivated by the existence of specific correspondences between particular pairs of auditory and visual stimuli instead (often, as we will see, based on the idiosyncratic correspondences that have been reported by synaesthetes). Ultimately, though, the emotional-mediation account would currently appear to provide the most parsimonious account for whatever affinity the majority of people experience between musical sounds and colour.

A taste for beauty: On the expected taste, hardness, texture, and temperature of geometric shapes

“…To consider the implications of the research presented in this manuscript, recent years have seen growing interest in the putative mechanisms underlying the crossmodal correspondences, and their relation with other kinds of crossmodal mapping, such as semantic correspondences and amodal relations ( Spence & di Stefano, 2022 , submitted ). Under those conditions where people are able to bring to mind a particular source object, such as being reminded of the fruit when smelling a strawberry aroma, then the correspondence with the color red would appear linked to the source object (i.e., a semantic mapping).…”

Visualise the tastes from the label: A study on the taste-colour crossmodal association of crisp and dry

“…Colour has been found to have a close association with different sensory modalities beyond vision (Spence, 2020 ; Spence and Di Stefano, 2022a ), and colour-taste association is one of those occurrences of crossmodal associations. The crossmodal association of colour and taste is encouraged to be used in food and beverage package design by previous research.…”

Searching for perceptual similarity within, and between, the (chemical) senses

“…Given that Helmholtz (1878/1971) makes no explicit mention of the chemical senses, it is difficult, in hindsight at least, to know whether he had the same opinion regarding comparisons amongst the chemical senses (e.g., that judging the similarity of olfactory and gustatory stimuli is equally futile). Furthermore, given that one can talk about both perceptual and affective similarity (see Spence & Di Stefano, 2022 ), it would seem reasonable to assume that Helmholtz was referring to the question of perceptual similarity in the above-mentioned quote. Here, though, one might want to consider whether Helmholtz intended his claim to refer only to the proper sensible rather than to what Aristotle (1907) referred to as the common sensible (see Everson, 1995 ; Owens, 1982 ; Spence & Di Stefano, submitted ).…”

“…For these and several other reasons, the description of OITE as a ubiquitous form of synesthesia would seem misleading and hence should probably be abandoned. Nevertheless, the point remains that while crossmodal correspondences might potentially be based on the perceptual similarity of the corresponding stimuli, they need not be (see Spence & Di Stefano, 2022 ).…”

“…Note, though, that in the latter case, the color stimuli that participants had to choose between varied in terms of a range of dimensions (i.e., hue, saturation, and lightness). Certainly, the notion of emotionally mediated crossmodal correspondences has become increasingly popular in recent years (see Cunningham & Weinel, 2016 ; Hauck et al, 2022 ; Spence, 2020a ; Spence & Di Stefano, 2022 ).…”