Phonaesthetics

Leading on from dissertation research and the last post I have started looking into Phonaesthetics, which explores the relationship between the representation of words and noises. This might be a really interesting and slightly more graphic orientated way of creating responses for the cymatics brief.

This is a longer definition of the term taken from wikipedia _-_-_-_-_-_

Phonaesthetics (from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, "voice-sound"; and αἰσθητική, aisthētikē, "aesthetics") is the study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences. Poetry is considered euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose. Important phonaesthetic devices of poetry are rhyme, assonance and alliteration. Closely related to euphony and cacophony is the concept of consonance and dissonance. From this meaning should be distinguished the closely related but different concept of phonaesthesia, which does not refer directly to aesthetic attributes of sound, but to phonetic elements that are inherently associated with a semantic meaning. The term was introduced by J. R. Firth in 1930 "The phonæsthetic habits [...] are of general importance in speech." Firth defined a phonaestheme as "a phoneme or cluster of phonemes shared by a group of words which also have in common some element of meaning or function, though the words may be etymologically unrelated."

I will try to get hold of some publications of the subject to obtain some more reliable sourcing and development for the brief.