Sensorium Modality – Bria Hughes

SENSORIUM MODALITY Bria Hughes

Copyright Š 2020 by Bria Hughes All Rights Reserved.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland Maine, May 11, 2020 Major in Graphic Design.

Design, typography, and content were created

by Bria Hughes. This book was typeset in HK Grotesk designed by Hanken Design Co. HK Grotesk™ is an Open Source sans serif typeface inspired by the classic grotesques.

Website: briahughes.co

Bria Hughes

For my parents.

I can’t believe you’ve put up with me for this long, but here’s what came out of it.

For my best friends.

Thanks for being incredible.

And also, For you.

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Preliminary Steps

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Again, and again, and again

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Zeroing In

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Keeping On

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Synthesis & Afterword

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PRELIMINARY STEPS

For three and a half years, I wanted to make a thesis based on a brand identity. It wasn’t until a quick exercise that I found myself steering away from that.

For a long time, identities were what made me passionate about design as well as hand lettering and custom typography. My early thesis ideas revolved around some of those things. Aside from design, I had always been intrigued by human perception.

Here’s a screenshot of what my ongoing thesis idea list looked right before we began. (Right) Lots of these were random thoughts that crossed my mind in a fever dream sort of fashion.

Some I find to be interesting to think about, but some I find to be just silly. My personal favorite is, “eternal sunshine idea?” Which I have no idea what it refers to. I wasn’t necessarily brainstorming heavily when it came to these, they were passing thoughts that I figured would be of use for me in the near future.

At the end of the fall semester 2019, all the seniors gathered to workshop some thesis ideas. At first, we were instructed to write down a list of 50 things we may have been thinking about, were curious about, or just anything in general that might pique our interest. I told myself specifically that I would not include brand identities in that list. I would force myself to see what other possibilities there are. My ideas ranged from something as basic as exploring packaging to more complex ideas like thorough examinations of trends within design and what that might mean for the future. What had stuck out most to me in this list though was synesthesia. As I was scrambling to come up with ideas, I remembered recently thinking about a high school friend that had synesthesia. I was in the band with her. She played clarinet, and I played trumpet. One time we were having a conversation and when I pointed out the F note she had told me she loved that part of the song because

green was her favorite color. This was the first time that she or I had ever realized that she reads music by color and I read it as black and white notes.

As I ruminated on the thought of doing a thesis that follows synesthesia, it felt as though this topic was meant to fall in my lap. Synesthesia is directly related to our perceptions of the world around us, and our ability to retain information

and associate it to other events in our lives. Psychology, emotion, and philosophy are a few of the things that have been dear to me for as long as I can remember.

Growing up I had frustrations of why people behaved in certain ways, or why people would make decisions that resulted in horrible outcomes. Alongside this, I had also grown up a musician. I knew how to play trumpet, guitar, saxophone, french horn, oboe, piano, you name it, I was probably trying to learn it. Synesthesia, although I don’t experience it, is something that fascinates me in the operation between melody and perception.

“My personal favorite is, ‘eternal sunshine idea?’ Which I have no idea what it refers to.”

Chromesthesia explained simply is the ability to see colors when you heard sounds. Now, you could probably close your eyes and imagine the color blue when you hear a G note on a keyboard.

But natural chromesthesiacs see these colors in their minds eye involuntarily and repetitively.

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I’m a highly visual person and immediately had so many visual ideas for this project. One of the first things I did after so groundwork research was look into synesthetic art and see how others have recreated the experience themselves. One that stuck out to me was done by Onformative, a studio for digital art and design in Berlin. Their project Collide (Left) is a synesthetic art installation that is primarily video and sound.

A large room featured narrow video clips that were and abstract representation of chromesthesia using man made colors and textures.

By mixing, reversing and eliminating restrictions of time and space, a new vision of the human body and mind is discovered.

The work is a multi-sensory experience exploring the subjects from an emotional perspective, examining the feeling of being immersed in the creative process and attentive to the present moment as the senses combine and become one.

Above: Synesthetic Art Artist Unknown

Below: Album Art Artist Unknown

Above: Sam Chirnside STIMULI x VITARKA

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AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN

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The project kicked off with a fairly quick and easy assignment.

We were given 100 square note cards that we had to fill out with words and terms associated with our topic. We then took those words (above) and organized them by categories or avenues that we found could be used in a way that helped us start thinking about all the paths we could take to explain our thesis. Some of the words that stuck with me were cross-modal processing, unexpected, and stimulatory.

After we did this charette, we came back with iterations of teaser posters that could give someone an idea as to what our thesis is about. This thesis was about making something inex-

pressible and highly interactive.

I played around with techniques that seemed rhythmic. After all, this thing was heavily going to rely on sound as a major component.

This took over 60 iterations until I got somewhere I was okay with.

At this point, I had gathered some interviews from people I know have chromesthesia. Unanimously they all said the way they see the colors is in a sort of swirling blur, like all the colors are mingling together. I used a marbling technique to get this sort of effect they seemed to be describing.

Rhythmic visual experience comes from Wassily Kandinsky.

One day whilst painting he was asked to describe his practice and he described it as such.

Creating this poster helped me in starting to identify forms that my overall visual language might take. Going forward, I established a muddled, color mingling effect using all colors of the spectrum so as not to leave out any variance. One might just call this a rainbow gradient, but I think keeping it simple is what helps the interactive elements really stand out.

Left: Teaser Poster Iterations

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After my poster was close to final, I started to feel lost in where to head next. I’m not sure how many times David and Charles had said this, but it was drilled into my head. “Just start making something.” So I did. By some fate, I found yarn at Reny’s that had the exact color spectrum I had been envisioning from the beginning. I bought the string without hesitation, but when I got back to my studio I didn’t have the first clue what to do with it. So I just started cutting and pinning the different sections of color to my studio walls. When it was all together, I figured it could be used as an entryway or some tactile element, but it never quite made the cut. (Pun intended) Although this small feat didn’t seem to get me anywhere, it at

least got me to a visual place.

I now had a color spectrum to work off of. With this, I created my thesis project color palette.

At this point, I thought it would be helpful to talk to more people who shared these experiences. It was also at this time that I started doing research for an interactive chromesthetic experience. I did some type exploration as well to nail done the visual aesthetic of my thesis.

Aa

I then designed this flyer and hung a few in MECA, and around Portland in hopes that I could find out more firsthand; however, most of the responses I got were more or less people that were interested in learning about what synesthesia is. These were always interesting conversations as well, though. They gave me insight on how others think this sensation occurs and why.

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Take One – Flyer

Take One – Flyer In Context

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Once I started to dissect how people with different backgrounds and understandings collectively experience color and sound, I decided I might want to show that evidence in my thesis.

“Ultimately, the project didn’t last” I had a fairly simple setup of noise canceling headphones, markers, and paper for people to use. I gave them headphones with music that I had chosen and asked them to draw what they felt. Some drawings were more obvious than others. Some drawings resonated with a lot of people, and some didn’t resonate with anyone. I then collaged all these drawings together and tried to apply the visual language I had just established to then document all of these understandings.

Pictured (left) and also (right) are those collages.

I worked on this project for a couple weeks. I compiled a lot of imagery and spent several hours photoshopping things to a place I liked them. I got mylar and printed on mylar in hopes that I

could use all of these to create walls that a listener or viewer could stand within. Ultimately, the project didn’t last. I hadn’t been confident in it, and I felt as though I spent a lot of time forcing it to work because I felt like I had gotten nowhere with any of my previously failed experiments.

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ZEROING IN

Later on in the semester, I had invested in a device called Playtronica. The device acts as a midi keyboard that works on conductive circuits to create sound. As seen in the demo on the right, wires are placed one end onto the midi controller, and another end into any kind of conductive material. This can be way, fruits, vegetables, or really anything in between. When these conductive materials are touched, they then create and produce sound based

on their electrical currents. This was the main component to my thesis. Users would be able to interact with this keyboard while I created a visualization as to what they were playing. For instance, the midi controller could be plugged into a desktop computer as well as a lemon and a lime. When a user would touch the lime, they would be able to see the color red on the desktop screen while hearing the note G. Or, the user could touch the

Above: Playtronica Demo

lemon and see the color purple on the screen while hearing the note B.

research through the form of interviews, where I discovered that a vast majority of people find they’re most calm when they’re Of course, this interaction is in comfortable places. Places more definitive than what the ac- that they’re familiar with like their tual condition is like most times. studio or their home were what To only show this simple interac- provided comfort. More specifition where I’m deciding the colors cally, the sounds within that enviisn’t enough. I needed a platform ronment provided them comfort, where users could also engage in like a cat purring on their lap or the sounds that they were hearing the fireplace cracking. and the way their bodies would feel.

With this and thesis in mind, I generated an idea that works off In interaction design, we were of users comfort sounds to create given the opportunity to incorporate our ideas into our thesis project. Our first assignment was to create an app that tapped into an emotion. The emotion I focused on was calmness. We started by gathering primary

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WELCOME WELCOME

TO COLORS COLORS TO HOLD HOLD

SOUNDS SOUNDS IN THE THE HOME HOME IN Dishwasher Dishwasher Laundry Machine Machine Laundry Coffee Pot Pot Coffee Shower Shower BACK BACK

Above: Colorscape Wireframes

Cat Purring Purring Cat Fan Fan Alarm Clock Clock Alarm Microwave Microwave

PLEASE WA W PLEASE

WHERE DO DO YOU YOU WHERE WANT TO TO UNWIND? UNWIND? WANT

SCAPE SCAPE

WAIT...

AIT...

In the the Home Home In In Nature Nature In In the the Studio Studio In Randomize Randomize BACK BACK

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Here’syour your Here’s COLORSCAPE COLORSCAPE INTHE THEHOME HOME IN Laundry Laundry Machine Machine CatPurring Purring Cat Microwave Microwave

BACK BACK

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Above: Colorscape Wireframes

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Above: Colorscape Logo

colorful and vivid environments for them. These environments are called colorscapes. The app starts by asking you what you want to do. You can 2 options.

One is to generate a new colorscape, and the other is to look through an archive that stores all of your previously made colorscapes.

Upon choosing to generate a colorscape, a user is asked where they want to unwind or relax.

They can choose between home, nature, or their studio. Within

these environments, there are sound that accompany them.

For instance, in the home you can choose the sound of a cat purring, a shower head running, a fireplace crackling, or laundry whirring. Once a user selects between one and three sounds, a colorscape is generated for them as well as a menu to view what they’re listening to, and an option to add it to their archive.

Right: Colorscape App Screens

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KEEPING ON

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it was emotionally exhausting for me to continue working on anything after COVID-19 left us all to self-quarantining. The ball I once had rolling had come to a complete halt, and being in the studio around the people I love creating next to seemed like a distant memory. Right before the pandemic hit, I had made the decision to simplify my thesis Below: Unity Builder

all the way down to a simple yet highly visual sensory experience.

After getting in contact with a few of the digital media majors and professors, I was able to figure out how to start to build a virtual reality experience.

I was going to create a virtual reality version of my colorscape app. In other words, a user could put on a virtual reality headset

Above: Unity Builder

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it was emotionally exhausting for me to continue working on anything after COVID-19 left us all to selfquarantining.”

and be 360 degree immersed in whirling colors. This would have been a fairly easy challenge. If I put in the time to finish the rooms and create the menus, I could get VR troubleshooting help from professors to set everything up for the final exhibition.

However, getting in person instruction on how to actually make this work, in put on hold until it’s safe to see people closer than six feet apart.

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SYNTHESIS & AFTERWORDS

MY WORK When I was younger, my room was filled with all sorts of craft store items. Jewelry making kits, Perler beads, and paints filled my closet to the brim. Every day I was making something. I had a dad who loved to draw with whom I would also compete against growing up to see which one of us was better. Art was about community for me when I was little. I would teach people at summer camp how to make bracelets out of gimp, and my cousins would teach me how to draw anime. Through art, I had the opportunity to connect with people and hear their ideas and learn more about who they were.

When I was a teenager, paints became code. With the rise of technology, I would find myself on tumblr for hours, editing code to make my website look just right. Now I find myself in the field of graphic design where I’m still thinking about community, connection and how it circulates.

My process tends to be methodical and tailored to what the project calls for. I approach every problem with a fresh perspective and will set out a few guidelines for myself to stay

engaged. I ask questions that will help to give me insight on what I’m designing, who I’m designing it for, what it is, and what it needs to do. These questions are answered through primary and secondary research. I’ll ask people about their thoughts on the subject matter, read articles, and look through similar pieces of design that might help me understand more about finding a solution. These insights are a starting point that gives me context to design for, and helps me form an opinion that I can then work towards. From there, it becomes an iterative process which means refinement. At times, I’ll change my idea, but I am constantly thinking about the final outcome and what I intend that outcome’s purpose to be.

When it comes to things that require production, I try to test materials and see what I can use to my advantage in order to make something that will bring my idea to life.

Materials play a specific role in my process. An example that shows how I work with material is a book I made titled “Time Warp Continuum” (Fig.1). The book is a compilation of written works from

Claude Caswell’s creative writing class at Maine College of Art, and doesn’t take a specific theme, but rather, spans several topics.

I developed the concept that these stories could live among different scenarios, people, and places in a space-time continuum. I used a continual line and warped pattern that flows through the book, as well as found photography of space, and type that felt more rigid and technical in nature. The concept was heavily focused on the push and pull between realities, which means material had to play an important role in communicating my concept aside from the visual language I had already incorporated. Transparent mylar was a paper choice I used to make it feel as though you weren’t only flipping pages in a book, but moving through the book (and time) to make sense of these contrasting and disconnected events. Material exploration is a tool I use to further my concept in the production phase, focusing mostly on digital visual components during the design phase.

I work digitally with visual forms by breaking a grid system. This comes from my interest in motion and how it has always been something that’s captivating in the way it can tell a story and make visuals more sensational and dynamic. Formal qualities of my work tend to be more gestural and authentic for this reason.

My interest in the current design landscape is brand development as well as print media and interactive media. The reason I’m drawn to these areas is because they rely on a certain methodical process and structure. It’s tough for me to navigate projects that are fairly abstract and open-ended. I like knowing that one task has to be completed before I can move forward with anything else. Identity design has been at the core of what I love for the past couple of years.

Identity design captured me through its charm and beauty, but also through my experience at Maine College of Art, as well as internships. The ways in which brands visually communicate a feeling captivates me even more. When one is affected by a certain combination of form, color, and type in the context of a product that serves a purpose in our lives and feels inherently connected to that brand-that’s a fascinating concept to me.

Publication design. on the other hand, has interested me for as long as I can remember.

I grew up an avid reader of books and teen magazines. I have a long history of creative writing and collaboration on small writing books, and when I entered Maine College of Art, a zine was the first project I was introduced to through the freshman seminar class “Portland Walking Library.” Publications

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and editorial work combine the ideas of communicating through material as well as telling a story through text, and it makes the viewer experience increasingly immersive.

INSPIRATION As previously mentioned, my closets were filled with crafts as a kid. You could never get my hands away from a craft table in daycare. When it was nap time, I was the only kid that wanted to stay awake and make more popsicle stick turkeys. I would pretend to sleep until my parents went to bed and then take out my bead container and make friendship bracelets until two in the morning. For four years throughout summer camp, I always eagerly awaited arts and crafts time, and for the following three years, I became a counselor who taught arts and crafts. I grew up loving the moments where I could meet people and learn about their experiences. Arts and crafts during my childhood made me the curious person I am today. I’m always itching to know more and to learn more about people, places, and perceptions.

People inspire me to no end.

Everyone comes into this world with a fixed set of personality traits, and traits that are everevolving. What I’m particularly interested in is knowing people’s histories, where they’ve come

from and how that informs who they have become. I’m also interested in how we form human connections through various forms of communication.

Koreen, founder of We’re Not Really Strangers, is a social artist that has started challenging these ideas through card games and environmental language-based art. What Koreen accomplishes is extremely valuable with her tagline “come curious, leave connected.” She urges people to learn and think deeply about each other in an effort to understand them.

Communication is significantly underrated. There is so much that we have to learn from each other outside of knowing one’s name and what they look like.

Much like how people are connected to each other, they are also connected, in a lot of ways, to their environments.

Location informs so many aspects of our lives including the way we communicate, what we wear, and how art and design visually present themselves. It was only a few years ago that I went hiking for the first time.

Mount Willard in northern New Hampshire overlooks a single lane highway situated in a valley between two mountains. This was my first hike, and since then, I’ve been trying to find the next tallest mountain to climb. To the hikers I know, the most thrilling

part is the challenge. For me, it’s about how small I feel when I’m at the top. Hiking has made me realize just how small we are in comparison to the vast expanse of this earth. I draw a lot of my inspiration from places like Zion National Park, southwestern desert landscapes, and ultimately natural environments that seem larger than life itself.

People’s perceptions of their environments and the metaphysical is also a topic I’m highly interested in on a personal level, but it is never truly evident in my work. There are some moments where I have the conscious realization that there are billions of people in this world, all moving at different paces and enduring numerous situations all at once.

These people come with their own set of characteristics, thoughts, ideas, and experiences that shape who they are and shape the world around them.

HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS Everything we experience in the world around us is based on five senses. They were taught to us at a young age where we learned that we perceive through sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch.

For most people, these senses operate simultaneously in order to provide a landscape as to how to understand our environments.

This overlap of multiple senses is

often referred to as inter-sensory processing or multimodal processing. Even though humankind has been aware of senses from the beginning of time, it has taken a while for philosophers to analyze how they interact with each other.

Molyneux’s problem is the first instance of philosophers questioning this notion of interaction of the senses. William Molyneux, a scientist and politician from the late 1600s, addressed a letter to John Locke that posed a question which lived all through the Enlightenment period. He asked whether a person who was born blind and learned to distinguish a globe from a cube by touch, could distinguish them simply by looking at them if their sight had been restored.

This sparked years of debate where philosophers tried to understand how the senses operate in conjunction and separately in order to perceive the world around them. At this point in history, scientists were highly interested in optics and the psychology of sight. For years, it was to be believed that without prior knowledge of how an object should be understood, an individual would not be able to experience it properly. For example, a person who has a loss of sight would not understand color or how it’s to be perceived.

Locke had made plenty of cases

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which stated that knowledge of rest, motion, and figure make way for individuals to acquire ideas by means of a combination of senses. “All these philosophers assumed that the visual and tactual sensations of an object differ from each other, but there was no agreement concerning the relationship between the two.”

No philosophers were ever able to come to a consensus on how the senses operate in conjunction with one another.

Throughout the empirical era, around 1800 and forward, there started to be more experimentation in cases where a sense is impaired. This followed an increasing prevalence of cataracts, which shed more light on the subject of physical and spatial perception. Ophthalmologists started experiments to see whether their patients could distinguish form, scale, and distance. Around this time, there were also observations being made outside of the adult human subject, such as babies and even animals. Based on these observations, it was understood that seeing is not inherently known, it is something that is learned over time based on repetition, scale, distance, and context.

Jumping forward to the 1900s, naturalist Diane Ackerman echoes these experiments by saying, “What is most amazing is

not how our senses span distance or cultures, but how they span time. Our senses connect us intimately to the past, connect us in ways that most of our cherished ideas never could.”

Around this time, naturalists, philosophers, scientists, and psychologists alike started to learn more about how the senses work in conjunction with form perceptions of the world around us. Ackerman does a particularly good job of bringing scientific questions to life through lore.

She takes the reader through questions never asked before like, “how did kissing begin?” and “why does music move us?”

These are still questions being answered and philosophized about today.

Synesthesia is often defined as a condition where one sense is often perceived as if by another sense. Among synesthesia, there are multiple secondary conditions that are specified depending on what senses are actually overlapping. Some of the more well-known ones being, grapheme-color synesthesia, where an individual perceives letters and numbers as certain colors, and ordinal-linguistic personification, where an individual perceives days and sequences as genders and personalities. Most scientists believe synesthesia has existed since the beginning of time. It was only in 500 B.C. that the

Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, who himself displayed signs of the remarkable trait, produced the first known description of synesthesia.

In the arts, Kandinsky is most popular for bringing synesthesia to light (see Figure 3). Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist who was a pioneer of abstract art. For Kandinsky, music and art were intimately tied together. He had a specific form of synesthesia referred to as chromesthesia. Chromesthesia is the condition of perceiving colors when sound is heard. Much of synesthesia is not often discussed mostly due to the abstraction of the condition. The perception takes place in the mind’s eye. For example, when told a word like “sun” one does not visualize a sun in front of them in real time, but rather in the mind with an association of form, color, and size.

Within my thesis, I’m exploring the intersection between philosophy, psychology, and design. Specifically, I’m looking at chromesthesia and how to simulate the experience for someone who has never experienced it firsthand. It’s important that I discuss earlier notions of sensory processing, interaction, and perception in order to frame what my viewer will see and perceive. Auditory, tactile, and visual components, when combined, start to create a

landscape that the viewer is able to move through. With reference to Kandinsky, I am creating works of art that I perceive as truth through my own experiences, and in reference to Diane Ackerman, I’m fabricating a story of the senses that synthesizes our past experiences with the present moment.

CONTEMPORARIES As talked about previously, scientists, philosophers, and psychologists grew increasingly curious about the senses and how they operate in conjunction.

Throughout the empirical era, there was an emphasis on experimenting with the senses in different cases. Ophthalmologists started experiments to see whether their patients could distinguish form, scale, and distance. It was understood that seeing is not inherently known, it is something that is learned over time based on repetition, scale, distance, and context. Between now and then, researchers have shown that our perception is learned. Today, we have the understanding that we are making associations every second of our childhood that establish our memories and our environments. These associations may become stronger or weaker over time. It’s this associative form of learned perception that creates conditions

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such as chromesthesia, the ability to see colors when sound is heard. During childhood, specific sounds and specific colors were associated with each other. My thesis attempts to fabricate this experience through the use of interactive media and sensory processing. What drives my thesis is the ability to bring awareness to these experiences.

Oftentimes, we choose to not believe the things we can’t see.

Chromesthesia is no exception.

Over time, my thesis has evolved to be immersive as it is crucial that someone is encompassed in order for the senses to be stimulated.

Artists like Kandinsky were often sought after and looked up to for their amazing ability to create masterpieces of color and form.

In his essays, Kandinsky recalled that he had heard a strange hissing noise, when he mixed colours on the palette. And this is how he described his impression of Wagner’s Lohengrin, “The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colors in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me” Accidentally, this impression has become one of the main motives that inspired the promising 30-year-old lawyer

to transform his life and become a painter.

Kandinsky is one of the more popular painters that aimed to create paintings (Fig 3) that evoked a certain pitch and rhythm. To Kandinsky, color wasn’t just a quality of an object, that color came with a deeper understanding, almost on a spiritual level.

On a more contemporary level, Billie Eilish, an American Singer-Songwriter also experiences chromesthesia. In her case, color is experienced with sound as well as texture, patterns, and lighting.

“I remember I went through a phase where I would just watch music videos without the sound, so I could just see the art of the video and not if it sounded good or bad” She discusses the idea that without sound, a video should be just as beautiful as it is with sound. She exemplifies this in her music video for Bad Guy. (Fig 5.) Her chromesthesia operates on a high sensational level that doesn’t stop at color and sound, but also everything that accompanies that in an entertainment piece.

Sometimes I can’t explain things so I kinda just draw exactly what I’m thinking… with Bury A Friend, [pointing to drawing] this is just a hotel hall and that’s the angle I wanted, and I didn’t know how

to describe that angle to anyone, so I just drew what I wanted the camera to see. That’s the only way I can communicate is with visuals.

Her music video When the Party’s Over (Fig 6.) demonstrates a dream she had that she drew and was brought to life. It’s oftentimes difficult, as someone who doesn’t experience chromesthesia, to understand what a synesthete is seeing or experiencing. My thesis aids in the understanding of this concept and what it means for a viewer to share in that experience.

Viewers will come from all walks of life. Some may have heard of chromesthesia, and others will not, and not everyone is going to be a believer. The goal here is not to convert viewers to believers, but to invite viewers into a space that they become engaged in, in a way that sheds light on this condition and gives viewers more of an understanding of what happens.

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AFTERWORD If my high school self could see where I am now, I’m sure I would cry of happiness.

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