Conceptual integration of sound and image: A model of perceptual modalities

Abstract

Based on Conceptual Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and drawing on a rich body of empirical material from music psychology and ongoing fieldwork research data collected in three countries, we review visual representations of music as a blended domain between music and 2d images, giving rise to the concept of musical shape. As we describe the mechanisms that seem to influence this blend, based on physiological parameters (primary sensory motor skills) and variable cultural denominators with a particular emphasis on the representation of time, we put forward a “Model of Perceptual Modalities”. Here, music interacts with components of other domain spaces (imagery) while being informed by cognitive metaphors (both culturally specific and human-universal) so as to provide a simple but enriched theoretical understanding of the relation between music and shape.