A Shift in Perception
When Constantine Caravassilis listens to stringed instruments, strange things happen. If he hears a chord played in the low range, his eyes might suddenly flood with colour: “a G,” he tells me, “is usually orange.” At other times, this type of sound can cause him to experience sweet or bitter tastes.
Caravassilis, an accomplished composer and doctoral student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, has an unusually strong case of synesthesia – a condition in which the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads automatically to the arousal of another.