Category Archives: Synaesthesia

Alphanumeric Synaesthetic Interpretation of Digital Self-Portrait Pixel Values

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This is an old project that suddenly found new life. It also needs a bit of explanation. Let’s say you have a black and white digital image, all shades of gray. Each of these pixels has a value that ranges from 0 (black) to 255 (white). This range looks odd, until you realize it’s actually a number coded in hexadecimal. This means that instead of 0123456789, the numbers count like 01234567890ABCDEF, which means each digit has 16 values. In normal numbers, “10″ is exactly ten, and in hexadecimal, “10″ is actually sixteen. This also means that “100″ in decimal is exactly one hundred (10×10), and in hexadecimal, “100″ is 256 (16×16).

What this means is that gray pixels can be defined as a two-digit number from 00 to FF. This means I can convert a two-digit grayscale pixel number to two color values representing my alphanumeric synaesthesia for those digits. If a pixel is gray value 78, a dark gray, the hexadecimal number is 4E, which is colored 4E.

So a grayscale image will convert to a full-color image with doubled pixels. Here’s an example of those pixels:

So I decided to create a self-portrait using this coloring scheme. I used this base image in grayscale:

I has to do some serious data conversion and manipulation, but I finally got that image rendered in the colors I see related to letters and numbers:

And here is that color map, layered with the original image:

Digital Signatures!

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Here’s a concept I started a couple years ago and have been mulling over recently. It might tie in with the synaesthesia angle, or it might not. We shall see. It’s what I call “Digital Signatures”, in which I turn my name (or, really, any word) into a representation of the ASCII coding a computer would use to render it as text. There are several ways to do it; the most pure would be to represent every symbol as code, including the spaces, so there would be no white space between words.

Fullly Digital Signature

Fully-Digital Signature, with Spaces as Code

This doesn’t work as well for human readability, so it’s nice to divide the shapes into words and arrange them so the word shapes read left-to-right.

Horizontal Digital Signature

"Louis Theodore Ollier", separated into words

Each letter is represented by a string of black and white squares, corresponding to ones and zeroes in the binary code for the letter. The codes are read left-to-right, the letters top-to-bottom. The capital T in “Theodore” is, therefore, represented by the digital code “01010100″, at the top of the second figure. To make it more explicit, here’s a handy diagram:

Description of Digital Signature

Diagram and Description of the Digital Signature

The reason I call these “digital signatures” is because a signature is, basically, a unique drawing that represents your name. Yes, some people are boring and actually write their names legibly, but they are few and far between. This is a unique symbol that represents my name, but done through digital means. In the original version of this project, I actually practiced drawing the resulting digital image with a wide brush and black paint, so I could create an analog version of this digital signature, bringing it back into the human world and re-introducing my hand. I will upload images of the hand-drawn digital signatures soon.

Another Synaesthetic Note

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This is on my website as well, but I figured it would be nice to link it here, as well. It’s a time readout made of squares, each of which displays a color corresponding to the color I associate with each number. The top row is the time (HHMM) and the bottom row is the date (MMDD). So, at the time of this writing, 11:05, Sept 22, the clock would read 1105 (brown-brown-grey-red) over 0922 (grey-orange-yellow-yellow). It will look different for you, of course, because you’re reading this at a later date. It will also change as the time progresses. I did a version with seconds, but that got a little too distracting. Hope you enjoy this version.

Synaesthetic Clock

So What Does “Mindhue” Mean?

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“Mindhue” is a reference to my alphanumeric synaesthesia, where
different numbers and letters associate with different colors. For
example, to me, the “m” in “mindhue” is a orangy red, while the “n”
is a much darker red. “D”, on the other hand, is pure orange. “I” is
black, whereas “u” is white. “H” and “e” are both green, but the “h”
is lighter and duller and the “e” is more foresty.