I think it’s strange that our reading didn’t point out the role of film in synesthesia aside from a short mention of Fantasia. I think the subject is very interesting as a tool for eliciting emotions, because it is the combination of sensory stimulants that creates a particular emotion. When you view a painting, particularly in abstracts, you are only able to interpret it visually, but that’s not what gives it emotion. For some it depends on how that painting stimulates your other senses. If the artist heard music when making the painting does the viewer hear music when they see it? In most cases they do not, unless they themselves are a synesthete, and the experience is not likely to be the same as the artist. But when a song is put into the hands of a filmmaker like Oskar Fischinger, or Norman McLaren they can give you a work of art that can dually be received by both eye and ear. That gives the audience a synesthetic experience comparable to the artists in creating the visual art. In this way it seems the role of film is particularly important in reproducing a synesthetic experience. But is it more important that the synesthetic experience take place inside the person or can exploiting multiple senses at once be considered a synesthetic experience?
Since the arrival of sound, and before that with live musical scores, there has been multi-sensory stimulation in the cinema. There have been attempts to elicit the other senses of the film audiences, with techniques that give the audience the touch of the film they are in. I am reminded of going to Paramounts Carowinds and going on the 007 ride where the seats moved while the watched a short action sequence. It made you feel as if you jostled about with the camera and at one point a bomb explodes on the lake and a spritz of water dampened the audience. If the world of film continues in this direction eventually we may end up with something I read about in the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. There is an “All Super-Singing, Synthetic-Talking, Coloured, Stereosopic Feely. With Synchronized Scent-Organ Accompaniment.” (Huxley 200). This instrument is described like a movie that can induce all of the senses to feel. This idea verges on the Bazinian myth of total cinema as well as a perfect multi-sensory stimulant art-form. That would give you the opportunity to feel range sensual stimulants congruently, but would that count as a synesthetic experience? Even if you believed it was real? Because the signals are not being translated by your brain, they would have to be translated for you. If that is the main criteria for a synesthetic experience it is likely that drugs will be the only option for that sort of personal experience if you are not a synesthetic perceiver.
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