W. Kandinsky, Composition VIII (1923). "The triangle and boomerang shape are surprised and pop up laughing with a 'whooo'", according to one synaesthete.

Credit: The Johns Hopkins University

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SYDNEY, 5 September 2006: What does a Kandinsky sound like? New research shows that vision and hearing are inextricably linked in everyone's brain, but only synaesthetes – people who have a rare condition in which the senses mingle – are conscious of it.

"Kandinsky wanted to make visual art more like music – more abstract. He also hoped that his paintings would be ‘heard' by his audiences," says Jamie Ward, a neuroscientist at University College in London, who conducted the research. "This seems more achievable now that we have found such a strong link between vision and hearing."

The results of his study, presented at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival, held in Norwich in England this week, show that we tend to agree on which images match particular sounds. According to Ward, this could have implications for how we understand art – particularly forms that combine imagery with sound, like film, opera and ballet.

"Although information from the world enters our heads via different sensory organs – the eyes and ears in this instance – once they are in the brain they are intimately connected with each other," says Ward. "Impressively, they are connected in non-random ways, so that some combinations of sound and vision go together better than others."

In the study, six synaesthetes and six people without the condition were asked to draw their visual experience of a particular piece of orchestral music. More than 200 subjects were then asked to choose from a selection of 100 images, the image that provided the best fit to the music. Respondents consistently chose the images drawn by the synaesthetes over control images.

This shows that while people without synaesthesia are not able to hear a painting or see a piece of music in a literal sense, they are able to sense the crossover, and tend to choose the ‘correct' image, says Ward.

"While some synaesthetes can actually hear a Kandinsky in a very real way, the rest of us don't have such a pronounced crossover of senses," says Ward. "But this research shows that all of us have links between our hearing and vision – even if we don't really realise it."

So what does a Kandinsky sound like?

According to one synaesthete involved in Ward's research, "There is a huge splurge of sound left-hand top – booming and vulgur! Below it is a mousy little meee sound which then translates into ‘oh's and ‘ah's and pops at the various circles. The triangle and boomerang shape are surprised and pop up laughing with a ‘whooo'."