Chromesthesia describes situations in which hearing certain sounds automatically evokes—in the words of Wikipedia—an experience of a colour. This is one of the rare examples in which a person is able to see a sound, giving something that is intangible to the eye a corporeal representation.
But the isolation of the senses also goes the other way, in that the concept of sounds—in particular music—is not necessarily easy to capture in the visual form. For companies in the music industry, this limitation has until now meant that their logos could not necessarily embody the sounds that they sell.
Wireless audio company Sonos has however managed to bridge the gap between visuals and sound with its new digital logo, which appears to reverberate like a set of speakers when users scroll up or down in their web browsers.
But Sonos isn’t unique in its efforts to bridge the gap between sight and sound. Last year, in an eerie campaign to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, German-headquartered Soundcloud created an acoustic representation—reconstruction, if you will—of the historical structure.