Category: Life technologies
How to Visualize Sound and Listen to Light
“A — black, white — E, U — green, O — blue, I — red…
I want to uncover the birth of vowels”
Arthur Rimbaud
On an abandoned hosting service called “Ephemera,” we discovered curious records. The author, calling himself Alex, claims to have found a way to see music and hear light. We cannot verify his identity: according to some sources, he is a former music designer; according to others, an audio sommelier from a parallel reality.
His instructions are dangerous and utterly illegal from the standpoint of common sense. But isn’t that why we’re all here? For your own good, we pretended to find a system in his musings and forcibly divided the letters into two paths. You can read them in any order; the result, according to our observations, is the same: mild bewilderment and a desire to pet a cat to the sound of Beethoven.
On how I heard the texture of silence . . .
“It all started when my computer,after playing the same beat for three days straight, begged for mercy and showed a blue screen. The ensuing silence deafened me. And I suddenly realized I perceived it not only with my ears: it was ash-black, velvety, and had the smell of cooled metal. My brain, deprived of its usual noise, threw an unscheduled corporate party and connected all departments of perception. Later I read on the internet that this state has a boring name — ‘synesthesia.’ Roughly speaking, to compensate for the lack of sound, hearing merged with smell, touch, and sight. Since then, I’ve started conducting experiments on myself.”
On how I crossed an iron with Johann Bach . . .
“I realized that to hack perception,you need to act like a hacker — find a hidden vulnerability. Simply associating sound with color is ineffective. It’s better to force the brain to do it in a panic, by giving it a cognitive shake-up. When the brain is simultaneously bombarded with disparate data, it desperately glues everything into one super-experience. I call this ‘The Method of Sensory Detonation.’
Yesterday I was ironing a shirt. A monotonous task. So I chose a heavier iron, which possesses a greater gravitational potential for warping reality. To Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D minor’ in a metal arrangement, I got down to business. Ta-da-da-DAA — the iron’s impact scorched a blazing orange crescendo onto the fabric. Sile-e-e-e-nce — a light movement left behind a silvery frost of vibrato. I felt the heat of the steam, the weight of the iron, the whiteness of the fabric, and this deafening sound merge into one. The shirt, of course, ended up a bit singed. But now, when I hear Bach, I literally feel a warm, ginger tingling crawling across my palms. Next time, I’ll try washing dishes to the cacophony of drum and bass. Let the shards of the old reality shatter against the new actuality, shining like a clean plate.”
On how I ate a sunset and washed it down with silence . . .
“Over time,my experiments became more sophisticated. I wanted elegance, a gourmet approach, a slow consumption of being. I decided to host a dinner and taste the world.
Having prepared a steak with berry sauce,I went out to the balcony to meet the sunset. The taste of the dense piece of meat felt like a juicy indigo color, the color of the coming night. The sauce intoxicated me with a sour-sweet explosion of raspberry and blackberry. And then, confetti of sunset gold scattered in my mouth.
I looked at the setting sun and chewed it.The scarlet color in the west had a tart, almost metallic taste, and the purple stripes on the horizon were cool and moist, like a piece of plum. It was one giant, unified feast of the senses. And then I realized that beauty is what you eat. Literally. Every moment, every landscape, every piece of music is a multi-layered dish.”
On how I made the city sing . . .
“Chewing sunsets and burning shirts is a cottage industry.I had reached the ceiling. Or the bottom. I was locked in my own skull and sought a way to connect to the external world. My first accomplices came to my aid — sonifier apps that know how to turn the visible into the audible.
I would point my phone’s camera at a crack in the asphalt, and it would begin to sing in a muffled, rattling bass, as if complaining about the weight of countless steps. I listened to the ‘history’ of an old brick in a wall. Its grumbling was grainy, with scratches and roughness. Every object, it turns out, holds a quiet confession. The world started talking to me, and its language was the music of quiet stories and forgotten lives.”
On how I felt the bass with my skin . . .
“If the city sings,why shouldn’t I become part of this choir? I would lie with my back on the wooden floor next to a speaker and listen with my whole body to music with deep, club-level lows.
The vibrations passed through the floorboards, through the fabric of my t-shirt, and entered my vertebrae as a hum that resonated throughout my entire being. Low frequencies flowed through my bones like a molten lava of calm, washing away the anxieties stuck in my muscles. I received the music as medicine, tangible in its architecture and physical power. In such moments, I understood that my skin is a membrane separating two symphonies: the external and the internal.”
On how I heard the voice of my feelings . . .
“Soon I moved to the final level.I decided to get to the source — to perception itself, before it became a thought, a sound, or a color.
I procured an EEG helmet— a device that reads the whisper of my convolutions. My obsession was to catch the state of ‘meaningless consciousness’ — that moment when the brain isn’t thinking, but simply feeling, and this unsorted data can be intercepted.
The computer transformed all these patterns into soundscapes.I caught the moment when the sound of silkiness was born before the very word ‘silk.’ The result was a strange iridescent sound sequence: no melody, no rhythm. It was the music of sensation itself — synesthesia in its primordial form, before it gets sorted into the shelves of the senses. This is what my own, unoccupied soul sounds like. And it’s the purest music I’ve ever heard.”
Editor’s Afterword
We never did find out who Alex is, but after reading his records, there’s a coppery taste in our throats, and silence rings on a high note. We have no idea what to do with this knowledge, so we simply pass it on to you. Perhaps you’ll find a use for it. Or open your own synthesis of the senses. Now it’s your move.
We’ve discovered new laws of the Universe in your pocket. By the way, there are many forgotten things in the Universe too.
Thank you!
