La primavera de VIVALDI by merate barakat

Ocean by merate barakat

Urabn Sound by merate barakat

Davis’ statement “Perception is never unmediated” [1] emphasizes that the physical environment cannot only be visually perceived, or only through any one sense for that matter, but collectively. Aristotle, in ‘On the Soul’, defines the sense of being sentient, perception, is the sense by which animals perceive that they perceive. The Classical Greek, like Roman Philosophers, medieval Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin thinkers dubbed it “The common sense” [2]. An architectural design is found to be successful when it manipulates one or more perception in order to convey a certain aesthetic significance.

New-borns have a connection between their five senses, similar to that of what adults have between the senses of taste and smell. This is due to the abundance of neural connections between all the sensory cortices. After six months the neural connections start a purging process based on the child’s environment, disconnecting the exorbitant connection4. However, the development of the neural networks has a few anomalies. Brain scans have shown that the visual cortex in visually challenged children is active when reading Braille, which is primarily a haptic stimulus [3].

James Turrell, a mathematician and psychologist, talks about sensory Synesthesia *; which is another neural connection anomaly between the visual cortex and other cortices; where they do not fully disengage. The perception through vision can affect the sensation of taste. He adds that similarly perception of colour can be triggered by perception through sound [4]. Thus, a sensation produced in one modality is triggered when a stimulus is applied to another**.

Programmable music is a phenomenon that is similar to Synesthesia, that all humans experience, which is an essential phenomena to this research. Differently, it is an associated thought that the brain always tries to create by comparing visual patterns with aural ones. For example, when one listens to Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 1 in E major, “La primavera” (spring) – Four Seasons, most listeners can associate the intermitted high pitch notes with bird song [3]. Humans that have lived within an urban setting can identify certain rhythms and frequencies with transportation, high-pitched sounds with alarms and sirens. To an urban dweller, the sound may signify destination, or danger.

[1] Davis, Walter A. The act of interpretation: A critque of literary reason. 1978.
[2] Heller – Roazen, Daniel. Inner touch archaeology of a sensation. 2007.
[3] Campen, Cretien van. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. s.l. : The MIT Press, 2007.
[4] Turrell, James. ART:21 Spirituality. [interv.] pbs. 01 23 2002.
* Although there is no record that Liszt was synesthetic, some of his documented quotes suggest so. “Gentlemen, please a bit more blue! this key demands it!” “This is deep violet. I beg you to focus on that! Not so pink!”
** Aristotle found an explanation for the relationship between pitch and colour based on Pythagoras’ mathematical principle of pitch.