Creativity and Sensation: The Case for Synaesthetic Media

The most salient and vital aspect of interacting with computer systems is consistently overlooked: the importance of computer systems as perceptual rather than conceptual tools. Insofar as people interact with them, computer systems function primarily as sensual transducers. The author posits that computer-based multimedia should be considered “synaesthetic media” due to their capacity to translate between modes of sensory perception. Synaesthetic media are the result of focusing design efforts on the perceptual possibilities of human-computer interaction (HCI). The author claims that such computer tools can serve as powerful supporters of human creativity. Rather than expending more effort on the fruitless quest for cognitive artifacts, he states, we need to recognize that we are already creating synaesthetic media and to direct our HCI design efforts accordingly.