AMIE TIAN




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A






Feel in the Blank:
Synesthesia Through a Sensory Dialogue




OBJECTIVE
This is my senior honors thesis in Media Arts and Sciences at Wellesley College. Centered around the phenomenon of synesthesia, this project explores the relationships between sound, color, and feeling, and how they translate across sensory boundaries.

The goal is to invite those without synesthesia to engage with a world they may not usually perceive, to stop overlooking the sensory details in their everyday life, to notice more, and to experience more deeply. It offers a nuanced translation between the senses through a series of videos, writing, and interactive MAX/MSP patches, creating a layered, multisensory experience. Where you too, can be a synesthete. 
    KEY DELIVERABLES



    ① Design Process


    To structure my explorations, I developed a thematic framework centered around the idea of “Feel in the blank: what ___ was that ___?” This question became a conceptual anchor that allowed me to consider how different senses inform and complete one another. I mapped out five distinct combinations across sound, color, and feeling:

    • sound–color
    • color–sound
    • feeling–sound
    • color–feeling
    • feeling–color

    Users can choose the elements from the drop down, and the combination will direct them to the corresponding webpage. 


    ② Color : Sound



    What Color was that Sound?


    Both sound and light are forms of vibrational energy—sound measured in hertz, and color derived from light frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectrograms visualize this overlap by mapping low frequencies to warm colors and high frequencies to cool ones. Though they exist on different scales, sound and color share a wave-based structure, offering a concrete way to translate between the senses in my project.

    What Sound was that Color?
    As the inverse of What Color Was That Sound, this exploration flips the direction, translating color into sound through interactive MAX patches, photographs, and music. 

    This is one of the patches which analyzes the RGB levels in the environment and generates a dynamic soundscape, assigning different sound mappings to each color channel. It offers two modes of interaction: a live feed for real-time input and a video mode for user-submitted uploads.


    ③ Color : Feeling


    What Color was that Feeling?
    Inspired by a phrase I saw at a SOWA gallery, this piece explores the emotional resonance of color, how we encode personal memories and feelings into specific hues. While colors like blue, red, or yellow are often culturally linked to certain emotions, these associations are fluid and subjective. I was particularly drawn to how personal experiences shape our own emotional color lexicons like how the contrast of blue and orange evokes a sense of quiet dissonance for me. 

    To translate this concept, I created a system that converts emotions into hex codes, bridging the intangible world of feeling with the measurable logic of color.
    The second part of this exploration is a live representation of this translation by using sound to express a feeling. This MAX patch processes a recording by analyzing its amplitude across three frequency ranges and mapping them to corresponding color saturation levels.The first patch visualizes In a Sentimental Mood by John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, translating its mood into colors that reflect the emotion evoked by the rise and fall of the saxophone. The subsequent patches explore a range of emotional expressions such as a baby crying and man laughing.

    What Feeling was that Color?

    This is a series of video works I created using Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro with my own footage gathered throughout the year, each centered around a specific color theme and paired with a soundtrack that reflects the emotional tone of the visuals.


    The videos are designed to explore the relationship between color, emotion, seasonal transitions, and sound. For example, the first video paired with the song, Autumn Serenade, evokes the warmth and melancholy of fall, while the second, Green is the Colour, draws on themes of renewal and reflection. Together, they bridge visual atmosphere, musical expression, and poetic mood through carefully constructed audiovisual compositions.





    ④ Sound : Feeling


    When we think about emotion in music, we tend to focus on surface elements such as major or minor keys, tempo, or lyrical content. But the emotional power of music often lies deeper, embedded within structural choices rather than tonal ones. A slow, descending progression can feel like sinking into a memory, while a sudden key change might jolt us with a rush of energy. Cadences, too, shape our emotional response: some resolve neatly, like an exhale at the end of a long day, while others leave us suspended, mirroring the uneasy tension of an unfinished conversation.

    This logic also applies to the use of counterpoint, where the movement of independent melodic lines becomes a narrative in itself. In this way, musical feeling emerges not from surface-level cues but from the interplay of form and motion. I explored the concept of counterpoint through an emotional storytelling lens, particularly how it captures the experience of two strangers crossing paths for the first time. Through this intricate interaction of voices, counterpoint embodies the tension and possibility that arise when two lives briefly intersect. I created this in video format, improvising a tune that captures the three movements of parallel, oblique, and contrary motion, telling a story through the sound and narrated through After Effects.






    AMIE TIAN