The noetic connection: synaesthesia, psychedelics, and language
Digital Creativity – January 01, 2005
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
A novel "Synestheater" system allows live performance to weave together multiple visual, aural, and linguistic systems, offering new avenues for **experiential learning**. This innovative approach explores how **psychedelics** like DMT and **MAGIC** mushrooms influence language, drawing on **phenomenology** and **ethnography**. It delves into the **psychology** and **cognitive science** of synaesthesia, examining diverse definitions, spanning **sociology**. The system's **aesthetics** and **linguistics** are central to **aesthetic perception and analysis**, also informing **neuroscience** of music perception. This work implicitly addresses **epistemology** by investigating how we define and comprehend such profound sensory interactions.
Abstract
Abstract The literatures that touch on synaesthesias-scientific, art-historical, literary, phenomenological, ethnographic, psychodelic-vary widely in their definitions, their interpretations, and their degree of comfort with the first-person, subjective nature of experiential reports. The significances given to synaesthetic experiences are similarly wide-ranging. This paper explores the relationships among synaesthesias, psychedelic experience, and language, highlighting Terence McKenna's synaesthetic language experiences on DMT and magic mushrooms. We describe the complexities of creating and performing with the Synestheater, a system that provides the means to weave together, in multiple mappings, two or more complex visual, aural, and linguistic systems in live performance.