As part of a new exhibition, the worlds of culture and technology collide, bringing sound to the colors of abstract art pioneer Wassily Kandinsky.
Kandinsky had synesthesia, where looking at colors and shapes causes some with the condition to hear associated sounds. With the help of machine learning, virtual visitors to the Sounds Like Kandinsky exhibition, a partnership project by Centre Pompidou in Paris and Google Arts & Culture, can have an aural experience of his art.
An eye for music
Kandinsky's synesthesia is thought to have heavily influenced his painting. Seeing yellow summoned up trumpets, evoking emotions like cheekiness; reds produced violins portraying restlessness; while organs representing heavenliness he associated with blues, according to the exhibition notes.
Virtual visitors are invited to take part in an experiment called Play a Kandinsky, which allows them to see and hear the world through the artist's eyes.
Kandinsky's synesthesia is thought to have heavily influenced his 1925 painting Yellow, Red, Blue.Image: Guillaume Piolle/Wikimedia Commons
In 1925, the artist's masterpiece, "Yellow, Red, Blue", broke new ground in the world of abstract art, guiding the viewer from left to right with shifting shapes and shades. Almost a century after it was painted, Google's interactive tool lets visitors click different parts of the artwork to journey through the artist's description of the colors, associated sounds and moods that inspired the work.
But Google's new toy is not the only tool developed to enhance the artistic experience.
Artist Neil Harbisson has developed an artificial way to emulate Kandinsky by turning colors into sounds. He has a rare form of color blindness and sees the world in greyscale. But a smart antenna attached to his head translates dominant colors into musical notes, creating a real-world soundtrack of what's in front of him. The invention could open up a new world for people who are color blind.
Reprinted with permission of the World Economic Forum. Read the original article.
Mysterious paintings on cave walls and ceilings from long ago no doubt offer insights into the lives of the people who made them. However, exactly what they tell us is less clear. While hunting scenes and images of communities seem straightforward, there are also more abstract images, such as the 5-armed pinwheels painted on the ceiling of Pinwheel Cave in the Wind Wolves Preserve of California's San Emigdio Mountains. Now, chewed clumps of jimsonweed have been found wedged into small crevasses in the ceilings. Datura wrightii, also called "Devil's Trumpet," is a hallucinogenic.
The findings are presented in a study published in PNAS.
A suspicion confirmed
Robinson in Pinwheel Cave
Credit: Rick Bury/PNAS
About 50 clumps, or "quids," of chewed Datura plant fibers were found tucked into the stone alongside the swirls. It's believed they were painted sometime between 1530 and 1890 by members of the Chumash tribe, linked to today's Tejon people. This is the first time traces of hallucinogens have been found in proximity to cave art. It strongly suggests a connection.
The discovery was made by archaeologist David Robinson of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in the U.K. Robinson has been excavating the cave since 2007.
As for what those red-ochre pinwheels represent, Robinson asserts that they depict Datura itself and the way that it unwinds at dusk as seen at the top of this article.
Datura wrightii
Credit: Dlarsen/Wikimedia Commons
Chemical analysis revealed that 15 quid samples contained traces of two hallucinogenic alkaloids found in Datura, scopolamine and atropine. Microscopy revealed that a majority of the quids contained remnants of Datura, and further 3D scrutiny found that the quids exhibited properties consistent with having been chewed.
Says co-author Matthew Baker of the University of Strathclyde, "The combination of chemistry and archaeology in this project has truly shown the power of a multidisciplinary approach to uncover new knowledge."
The Chumash people are known to have used Datura in adolescent rites of passage and for shamanic vision quests. The plant was considered part of the tribe's spiritual family, personified as an old woman named "Momoy." The plant is classified today as an entheogen, which are plants used for spiritual purposes.
Datura was often ingested after being processed into liquid form, it was also chewed, as seen in the cave's quids. The Chumash knew how much Datura to ingest — it can be lethal when the dosage is too high.
Bringing the past to the present
Credit: Devlin Gandy/University of Central Lancashire
"The link between hallucinogens and rock art has long been suspected," says Robinson, "and this research shows that it was not only a source of creative inspiration for these prehistoric groups of people, but a core tenet of important rituals and community gathering."
He adds, "These findings give us a far more in-depth understanding of the lives of indigenous American communities and their relationships, from late prehistoric times right up until the late 1800s. Importantly, because of this research, the Tejon Indian tribe now visits the site annually to reconnect to this important ancestral place."
Co-author Fraser Sturt of the University of Southampton, lauds the partnerships that made the findings possible:
"The results of this project spring from a high interdisciplinary, open and collaborative approach to research. In this way, new and improved recording and analytical techniques have helped to reconnect material remains, art, narrative and people across space and time. Thus, while the focus is on the hallucinogenic properties of Datura and its role in rock art and community generation, this work also shows that it is one facet of a complex suite of relationships between people, place and the environment."
Creativity is a uniquely human trait. We can dream up gods and demons and give them form through drawing. We can even take a two-dimensional surface and bring our ideas to life in three dimensions. All we need is a little training for our giant imaginations to blossom on the page.
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A 2018 study, published in Behavioral Sciences, discovered that creative endeavors, such as art, have particular relevance to stress prevention and stress management. The team discovered that creative arts are used intentionally to provoke therapeutic change, and help patients effectively manage traumatic experiences. Over 80% of the studies the team looked at found significant improvement in problems related to stress. And I think we can all agree, these are stressful times.
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Like any culture, Japan has its fair share of folkloric creatures. But to Westerners, whose folklore tends to recycle the same variations on witches, goblins, orcs, and dragons, Japan's bestiary of creatures can be staggeringly varied. Out of the hundreds of yōkai—or supernatural beings—here's just nine of the strangest.
1. Tanuki
A bake-danuki uses it's, um, special skill set to fashion a boat.
Kazusa-ya Iwazô, 1842
Starting the list off strong are the tanuki, or raccoon dogs. Tanuki are real animals native to Japan that look, as their name would suggest, like a cross between a raccoon and a dog. But the folkloric version of tanukis, bake-danuki, are much more mischievous and powerful. If you have ever been or go to Japan, you have or will undoubtedly run across statues of wall-eyed, chubby, friendly-looking creatures.
These are tanuki, but they're a much more modern, friendly reincarnation. Tanuki in the past were tricksters who possessed the ability to shapeshift and stretch their massive scrotums (yes, really). Depictions of tanuki show them using their scrotums for anything from makeshift watercraft to making giant, comical faces.
2. Jorogumo
Wikimedia Commons
A decidedly less delightful yōkai is the jorogumo. When an orb-weaver spider turns 400 years old, it grows horrifically large and becomes capable of transforming into a beautiful woman to lure men to later eat. Since the jorogumo's origin story involves real spiders, the word is also used to refer to several species of spiders, who, if they could live to be 400 years old, would ostensibly become this unpleasant creature.
3. Kappa
Wikimedia Commons
Humanoid reptiles named kappa are said to inhabit Japan's ponds and rivers. They are short and scaly, have beaks for mouths, and have a bowl on top of their heads that contains water. If a kappa's bowl is emptied on dry land somehow, they're said to lose their magical powers. Although they're generally malevolent, kappa are supposed to be very polite. If a passer-by bows to them, they'll have to bow back, losing the water in their bowls. If that passer-by refills the bowl, they'll have made a friend and ally for life.
Kappa drown children, drink their victim's blood, or sexually assault woman, but they also have three obsessions. The first are cucumbers, which they apparently can't resist. The second is sumo wrestling. And the third is obtaining shirikodama, jewels that contain the soul, located—where else?—in people's anuses.
4. Kamaitachi
Wikimedia Commons
The kamaitachi are weasels with sickle-like nails on their paws. When they attack people, they ride on whirlwinds, knocking their victims down before giving them a quick slash on their ankles or calves. Allegedly, the creatures' sickles contain a kind of medicine that stops the wound from bleeding or hurting, which is at least the polite thing to do after knocking somebody down and cutting them up. The pain is said to set in later, however, after the numbing medicine has worn off. For some unknown reason, only men get attacked by kamaitachi.
5. Nuribotoke
Brigham Young University via Wikimedia Commons
The word nuribotoke means 'lacquered Buddha' or 'painted Buddha' due to the creature's black skin and minor resemblance to the Buddha, mainly because of its large stomach. Their eyeballs dangle out of their sockets, and they have a long tail that resembles a catfish's tail. They also stink.
Japanese homes and temples often contain a Buddhist shrine called a butsudan, a kind of ornate cabinet containing a small shrine within. Butsudans stay open during the day but are closed at night since it's believed that spirits can use it to enter the material world. When a butsudan is poorly maintained or left open at night, nuribotokes can enter homes, sometimes appearing as Buddhas who give false prophecies or dance around at night.
6. Tsukumogami
A lantern that's become a tsukumogami.
Wikimedia Commons
Tsukumogami is an umbrella term for tools or household objects that, after their 100th "birthday," gain a soul. Generally, they're depicted as friendly, but tools that were thrown away or misused are thought to become vengeful toward their previous owners. You could have a possessed futon (with the delightful name of a boroboroton), lantern (chōchin-obake), umbrella (kasa-obake), or any number of items.
7. Nuppeppo
Wikimedia Commons
The word nupperi is a slang term used to refer to a woman who applies too much makeup, which is the likely origin for this creature's name. Nuppeppo are blob-like creatures with the suggestion of a face beneath their amorphous fat. Folklore describes them as being mostly harmless aside from their disgusting odor, which smells like rotting flesh. Generally, they appear at night near graveyards and temples. Some sources say that if a human can catch the quick-moving creature, kill it, and manage to eat the nuppeppo's disgusting flesh, they might gain eternal youth or cure a serious disease.
8. Ashinaga-tenaga
Wikimedia Commons
These are actually a pair of yōkai: ashinaga ("long legs") and tenaga ("long arms"). As their names would suggest, these creatures resemble men with either long legs or long arms. The pair work together to catch fish: ashinaga wades into deep waters, and tenaga uses his long arms to catch the fish below.
9. Futakuchi-onna
Wikimedia Commons
Futakuchi-onna appear as regular woman, although they have a concealed mouth on the back of their heads. The futakuchi-onna uses her hair, which act as tentacles, to grab nearby food and feed her second mouth. In most folkloric tales, the futakuchi-onna was the wife of a miser who rarely supplied her with food. Eventually, the wife sprouted a second mouth that demanded food, spitting obscenities and screaming otherwise, thereby transforming into a futakuchi-onna.
