Imagine your brain involuntarily associating musical tone with color or individual letters and numbers with distinct colors. Imagine tasting words.

These kinds of neurological phenomena are prescribed traits of a person with synesthesia, a condition in which one sensation is automatically experienced through another sensation. For example, Duke Ellington experienced timbre in color, and Olivier Messiaen saw chord structures in color.

Interested? Amanda Weber (‘08) was when she learned about the condition last year and decided to use it as a focus for her senior honors project.

With the senior project deadline on April 25, crunch-time is approaching. Many seniors would honestly admit that it is a major source of stress and at this point, they would prefer for it to just be over.

But some seniors would also say they love what they are doing and their senior projects really are the “culminating, independent experience” the college’s course catalogue says they should be.

Weber fits the latter profile. Like many other seniors, her personal investment and passion in the subject matter has made for a very intriguing project, even for those outside of her majors.

As a double major and double minor, Weber has always had a difficult time narrowing her field of interest.

“If I could major in connectivity or creativity, I would,” said Weber.

The art and music major, French and psychology minor, wanted her culminating work at Luther to encompass all of her interests, so she is aptly using synesthesia as her project’s unifying thread. She will give both an art show and piano recital, as well as write a paper on synesthesia.

For the recital portion, Weber will play four pieces composed by synesthetes and two commissioned pieces — one tastes like metal, and the other smells like vinaigrette. Her art show will include a work for each piano piece as well as a series of monochromatic paintings over transferred photos, using color theory and matching color to the emotion of the subject. Her showing will be in the Center for the Arts atrium, April 26 at 2:30 p.m.

(English major) Katie Curran (‘08), also took an atypical approach to her senior project and is writing about cutting-edge events in the popular music world.

Curran’s paper applies Marxist theories to today’s music industry. She looks at the way in which popular music is now commodified, using the band Radiohead as a case study.

Her thesis argues that the exchange value of music has become more important than its artistic value, doing a disservice to the artist and the listener alike.

“When the artistic process becomes secondary, then the entire art is sacrificed,” said Curran. “The industry is not conducive to creativity.”

Radiohead countered the music business by first releasing their latest album, In Rainbows, as a digital download. Not in contract with any label, the band offered their new music online for three months, letting people pay for it as they saw fit.

Essentially, the band took over their own means of production and did not allow their labors to be exploited by a certain record company.

As a rock music director at KWLC, Luther College’s radio station, Curran has a deep-rooted interest in the music world. She believes that Radiohead’s progressive move is a step in the right direction for music artists.

“I mean, Rihanna may want to sing about her umbrella and that’s fine,” said Curran. “But we have to let artists create.”

According to Curran, major music labels are failing as it is, and this just helped accelerate the process.

“This is a time for revolution — a call for change in this structure.” said Curran

Curran plans to follow this interest in popular music by pursuing cultural studies and musicology at the graduate level, ultimately becoming a professor in popular music studies.

Like Curran, Jay Dicke (‘08), a chemistry major, completed a senior project that will directly aid him in his future academic and professional endeavors.

At the University of Georgia this past summer, Dicke began his research experience in computational chemistry, using quantum mechanics to predict the structure and properties of molecules.

Although he did not do chemistry as many people envision, with a white lab coat and smoking beakers, he was working in a smaller division of chemistry under a well-known professor in the field.

“Models can’t be perfect,” said Dicke. “Somebody still needs to go into the lab and test theories, but it’s a lot more efficient this way.”

Because everything in this field is theoretical and done on the computer, Dicke was able to continue his work at Luther last semester and over J-term.

Dicke plans on earning his Ph.D. in chemistry and hopes to eventually attend to the current energy crisis in the United States, looking at hydrogen energy and different models for storing energy.

“We’re getting to understand chemistry on a fundamental level,” said Dicke. “Models are getting better. We can get a bit more rigorous about how we’re conducting our chemistry.”

His paper was recently published in the scientific journal, Chemical Physics Letters.

“It’s kind of cool to see it all and know that I contributed to the scientific community, or something like that,” said Dicke. “It’s not groundbreaking material, but it’s the first step of many that I imagine I’ll be taking in my career.”

For some seniors like Curran and Dicke, their projects may be a jump-start for their graduate work and eventually their careers. For others, their projects may never resurface after their completion.

Although Weber does not plan to continue her study of synesthesia academically or professionally, she will be influenced by it for the rest of her life.

“It made me more aware of my perception as a whole,” said Weber. “It affected my art as a whole. It makes you pay attention to how you think of things — nobody really pays attention to their own perspective.”