Synesthetic aspects in the visual Communication of the music: Mental imagery and graphic representation

Abstract. This paper deals with the ways of solicit, to describe, to communicate music through visual supports. The lecture is about the relationships between the visual mental imagery solicited by listening, or by the musical idea, and its graphic representation. According to SCHAFER (1977) a sound can be described through two different languages: by means of words, therefore using a verbal language, and inevitably by means of synesthetic metaphors; or through some graphic signs, or through a drawing, therefore using a figural language. GOMBRICH (1963) thinks that the equivalences among different elements are linked to factors such as the structure and the context of the representation. Essentially the semantic space in which we put a concept, even though induced by a sensation (OSGOOD, et al., 1957). To these factors we believe the communicative functions of the representation should be added (descriptive, prescriptive, evocative, etc.). The paper proposes a classification of the ways to represent music in relationship to the functions, techniques and sensory registers, and it compares the associations between sound and sign defined by artists and designers with the recurrent associations that emerge in the studies of the psychologists on synesthetes founded on the story or on the spontaneous sketch of the subject. In conclusion the work of artists and designers can be considered as a “professional” way to represent mental images.