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Sand
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18 Apr 2009, 4:00 am

While adjusting the frequency response of my audio controls I suddenly realized that there was a temperature component to my audio response. Higher frequency sounds sounded colder to me and the lower frequencies were warmer. Of course the music terminology of describing sounds as sharp or flat seems appropriate to most people. As an artist working with both graphics and sculpture I am aware that there is general reference to colors tending towards the red as warmer and I subconsciously connected this to the color of normal fire burning carbon materials which are yellow and red. There are, of course, burning materials that generate green and blue and white but these are not what we normally associate with fire.
Surfaces also have temperature components. Rounded and curved surfaces generate a warmth while flat surfaces with sharp edges intimate coldness to me.
Fuzzy surfaces are warmer to me but texture to me doesn’t in itself give me a temperature feeling. Soft surfaces are warm. Hard surfaces are cold. Aesthetic architectural appraisal seems to use these relationships.

I wonder if these feelings are universal and perhaps genetic or are merely a result of cultural and experiential exposure.



Atomsk
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18 Apr 2009, 7:25 am

This may explain your interpretation of sound:

The warmer things get, the lower pitched the sounds are that they produce.

Example: Turn on your tap. Have it go from cold to warm, you will notice the sound it produces gets lower. Same principle when your shower decides it wants to blast you with a flaming torrent of hot scaulding water. When you hear your shower's tone change, get out of the way! It's about to either blast you with hot water, or really cold water.



Sand
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18 Apr 2009, 1:00 pm

It may also have something to do with frequency spectrum. High frequency sound, like high frequency light are out of the heat spectrum while infra red is a heat section of the spectrum and low frequency sound may somehow relate. This seems to be pushing the relationship but there may be something in it.