This visualization, titled "C H R O M O", gives you a taste of what it's like to see sounds — and trust me, it's captivating.

What is it?
It was created by an artist named Pasquale D’Silva, a young man with synesthesia, a condition involving a "cross wiring" of sorts in the brain. Those with this condition experience different mixed experiences regarding the senses, meaning sights, sounds, smells and tastes can trigger experiences with other unrelated senses.

Pasquale D’Silva is Creative Director and Co-Founder of a revolutionary music app, Keezy. In one interview, he reveals that, through his condition, “people named Melanie are pink” and "the sound of a heater is a “ghosty, peachy pink.”

A little background...
For people with synesthesia, neurons and synapses that are usually contained in one sensory system in the brain cross to that of another sense. This means any sort of stimulus aimed at one sense is actually stimulated and perceived with another, creating the cross-wired effect and resulting combined experience of synesthesia. The condition can involve a variety of different sensory stimuli involved in art and creativity: numbers, words, colors, etc.

Some might say Silva's creative streak is especially powerful and aligned through his condition. According to an article on the evolutionary benefit of synesthesia, renowned researchers in neuroscience such as V.S. Ramachandran have speculated that the condition is possibly retained in the human gene pool due to its creative and artistic merit. A large number of artists throughout history has been linked with potential cases of synesthesia, notable figures like Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Liszt. 

Famous contemporary artists with this condition include the likes of Pharrell Williams, whose song “Happy,” which killed the top music charts following its release last year, is described as “yellow with a hint of mustard and sherbet orange”.

As widely known as this condition is among those of the field, it is still unusual for the very people with synesthesia to judge their experiences from beyond the norm. Even Pasquale D'Silva writes in the description of his video, “ I used to think this was a normal thing that everybody had, until my friend Jake told me I was a freakazoid.” Additionally, there are still questions left unanswered by scientists concerning this mysterious phenomenon.

One thing, however, is for sure: we are truly grateful for the beautiful result of Pasquale D'Silva’s condition. This visualization is stunning. Only after I had watched it five times and sent the link to all of my close friends did I truly realize what he meant when he dubbed his case of synesthesia “a superpower.”