“As a person with synaesthesia, my practice is based around an almost performative painting technique, where I immerse myself in sound and attempt to recreate the textures, tones and colours of the audio stimulus on canvas; and then digitise the paintings to build large scale projection and sound installations where people can experience a synthesised synaesthesia, a world where colour and sound are completely synchronous.
Synaesthesia (or more specifically chromesthesia) is a condition where someone’s brain interprets sound and audio stimulus as colour, texture shape and movement. We hear the sound the same as everyone else, but at the same time experience it as one of the reactions above. There are two main kinds of chromesthesia (sound-colour synaesthesia): Associative – where we just KNOW the sound is a certain colour and texture, like a gut reaction; and Projective – which is where the cross modal sensory perception kinda bleeds into our field of consciousness or vision. As far back as I can remember I’ve always experienced sound like this, I remember being a kid and driving to my grandparents house with my family. My Dad had a reggae CD we would always listen to, and every time a certain track would play all I could see was a bright aqua and turquoise glaze that felt like it had the shape of the inside of a teapot. The synaesthetic associations don’t always make sense but they always feel familiar…”
