Abstract

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics edited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. This chapter suggests that an examination of “seeing through music” highlights the cross-sensory or synaesthetic dimension of perception and identification in naturally occurring settings. Using data from interviews with elderly Japanese people who recall their first encounters with the West and Western classical music, it then considers how musically led visualization may be part of how individuals imagine and then orient to phenomena that they may only encounter in the future. This process of virtual seeing highlights music’s role as a “prosthetic technology”—in this case, a tool for visual enhancement, which in turn may provide resources for future action, goals, and aspirations, for “seeing” and acting in and acting upon future events. Finally, to the extent that music enables one to envision the future, the chapter suggests how musical “visualization” can enable new learning.