Singularity is something great and at the same time tortuous, cradle of the great ideas that have changed the world and continue changing societies. Ideas and small groups are inherent to our species, some fight for a change and for making the wheel of the great masses move, others try to establish an ideal as a tendency or simply seek to stop being attacked, some do not intend to change the social order but to sensitize the collective heart and at the same time to satisfy the thirst for communication that we all have; the misunderstood have brought us the most wonderful things, although many die without having the privilege of approaching their voices to the megaphone, sometimes due to the lack of expressive methods, because of the limited number of common symbols used to do so.
Quoting schematically the flower of life would like to highlight the importance of what each of us encloses in its circle and how excessively private it can become no matter how large and well executed our desire to share something from the world of ideas. As Darío Sztajnszrajber explains in this master class, the gap between "the real" and what our brain is capable of perceiving is enormous, in spite of all the information that we manage to capture our perception is full of blind spots. Then we are crossed the same dilemma between what we perceive and language, because language is to our perception the same as our perception is to the environment and when the reductionist part of language threatens the essence of an idea art comes to cover those complex things for which there are still no words.
The synaesthesia fits very well within all mentioned, for those who don't know the term it's about a perceptual phenomenon that affects approximately 1% of the world population. A biological exception that has always magnified the field of arts and it has been expanding the field of neuroscience in recent decades; something that could generate significant contributions in our species hand in hand with technological advances. Maybe we are talking about the clearest indication of a new period in our biological evolution.
Some Theory…
Etymologically, the word synaesthesia comes from the Greek "sún" (together) and "aisthesis" (sensation), which give us a clear idea of its meaning; for purposes of this publication will be taken as:
“The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body”. English Oxford Dictionary Online [OED Online] (2001)
Therefore, people who have this perceptual condition experience multiple sensory responses to a physical stimulus, in other words they have its wires crossed; if they hear a sound they can see a color simultaneously, or they perceive a taste when they touch a surface with their hands; in the same way they can have a sensory response when perceive linguistic, logical and cognitive symbols such as words, numbers, days of the week, including faces and in this way affirm that Tuesday is bitter, that Monday is orange, that the number zero is timid, among many other inconsistencies compared to common perception.
The first records of formal scientific studies about synesthesia date back to the end of the 19th century by Francis Galton, but it was not until the second half of the 20th century that the veracity of synesthesia could be verified as a reality, before of that and because of the great influence of positivism on the investigative works the studies about a subjective phenomenon were not taken into account and ended up being considered as something of little importance; Synesthetes were often sent to psychiatric hospitals and they were diagnosed with schizophrenia, or they were classified as having drug addiction problems (LSD), all because of the lack of information. unfortunates.
Only 1% is synesthete? Why is it?
The truth is there are several theories regarding the causes and factors that influence some people have the luck of having synesthesia and others not, within the most accepted and disclosed resonates that we are all born with synesthesia and as the brain develops we neuronally mark each of our senses, this process is known as synaptic pruning.
The process analogically is a pruning or suppression of the synaptic connections that our organism in its natural choice considers unnecessary or unprofitable and eliminates them to make more effective communication between those connections that it considers of greater importance, this process does not take carried out with such rigor in the synesthetes and this explains their crossing of neural cables; So while the population usually has a house with 5 rooms in its head, the synesthetes have a warehouse with office type subdivisions, incomplete walls and paper doors. So we all continue being synesthetes maybe not at the level of seeing colors in the letters, or savoring a sound, or spatially locating a sequence of numbers, but we do preserve certain synesthetic traces in our everyday experiences. There are many scientific experiments that prove it, a clear example is the bouba/kiki effect, which shows that human beings do not assign names to objects arbitrarily.
Even the physical world itself shows some correspondence when generating the signals that we process and qualify as color and sound, it may sound reductionist but in that sense everything is summarized to vibratory phenomena.
And the art?
As is to be expected, the vast majority of these people have an inclination for art and related activities, from where we want to see it, their condition makes them more susceptible to art and the creative world although the fact of being synesthete does not determine that their artistic abilities in the production of works are superior. However, they have more sources of inspiration and perhaps their need to transmit their experiences is greater. Not all the synesthetes "use" their condition to express it in their artistic works, in the field of painting and music there were many artists (some synesthetes), who explored this "fusion" of senses and tried to reproduce it in their creations within which highlights Aleksandr Skriabin (musician) who sought to create a direct relationship between the chromatic scale and the chromatic circle, later caught the interest of some members of the group Der Blaue Reiter as Vassily Kandinsky (Painter) and Arnold Schoenberg (musician and painter). They were part of the expressionist movement.
Yellow, red and blue (1925) Wassily Kandinsky. Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris, Francia. Source
"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul” Kandinsky (1911). Concerning the spiritual in art .
I suppose that all of the above is enough to enter into context, this is where it gets interesting.
A few months ago while I was surfing I came across a video, it showed a man with an antenna implanted in his head, it was Neil Harbisson, the first cyborg legally recognized in the world since 2004.
Neil is an artist, musician, born with a visual condition that makes it impossible for him to see the colors, known as achromatopsia, therefore, the world looks grayscale for him. With the help of experts it was implanted an antenna connected to his brain that allows him to perceive the colors, not to see them, but to perceive them starting from a synesthetic principle; The antenna has a camera that translates the tonalities of color to sound waves and in this way Neil can perceive the color by listening to it. Here I leave a video where Neil himself explains it.
With the possibility of perceiving color, Neil took an important step that challenges much of the social and cultural order that we knew until now. It argues that humans can begin to design their senses, extending them and transcending the barriers of human perception of the physical world; From perceiving beyond the ultra violet and the infra red, expanding the auditory spectrum, or as Moon Ribas that was implanted a vibrating chip in the arm that allows him to perceive all the earthquakes of the world in real time; the possibilities are endless.
To do this, the Cyborg Foundation was created, a foundation that seeks to help those who wish to take the step of becoming cyborgs, and at the same time fight for the defense of their rights, because of course ... the current laws are for humans.
What determines that a cyborg is considered as such?
We turn again to the oxford university dictionary that tells us that in order to be a cyborg you have to "be made up of living matter and electronic devices", but the cyborg foundation raises a very interesting argument for us; talk about the existence of a psychological cyborg that involves
all of us who have a daily and continuous interaction with technology, rather with smarthphones. Although it may be a little exaggerated to consider such an affirmation if we are referring just to a tool, and also is not directly linked to our organism, however, depending on the lens with which it is focused it can be considerable.
What does the future hold?
Returning to the principal idea, either biologically or artificially, we are experiencing an evolution of our species, exploring new horizons of human perception and therefore expanding our capacity to know the physical world. After so many years of positivism and scientism the man is turning his attention to the subjective and immaterial, understands that not everything can be observable and measurable and at the same time takes advantage of all the knowledge about the physical world compiled in so many years of studies, letting accompany him in that introspective journey in which we are embarking, where art does not stop being on many occasions an informative media about the immaterial world.
I like to think of synesthesia as a progress, as an evolutionary spark and a solution. It turns out to be a window into the unknown and although synaesthesia does not derive from cyborism and the cyborism approach is not the synaesthesia, the fusion of both brings solutions for those who lack one of the 5 senses, it is known that these people develop other sensitive areas more than normal so it does not seem crazy to think that a blind man would stop losing visual information if he had an implant similar to Neil, among many things I have no doubt that the experience of that person would be much more interesting; What if we, like a blind man, even with our 5 senses at the top, are losing valuable information? How blind are we to our environment? because a lot of those gaps are filled with superstitions and mystical explanations and I don't blame us, but will we have the possibility to transcend those barriers?.
And one more:
If having an antenna implanted in his head Neil Harbisson's brain had to make a neurological modification, consequently his whole organism had to adapt, which for many represents an aberration to the divine creation. What do you think would happen if Neil conceived a child? i mean, could cyborism modify our genetic code? For some this represents an atrophy of man as a living being, for me, it is transcendence, evolution, progress and I think it is inevitable.
