What has large-scale analysis taught us ?

S FOR SATURDAY PRESENTATIONS An Eyeful of Sound: Animating synaesthesia Samantha Moore is senior lecturer in animation at the University of Wolverhampton, UK and is a member of CADRE (The Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation). She is an animated documentary maker; An Eyeful of Sound (2010), The Beloved Ones (2007), doubled up (2004) and Success with Sweet Peas (2003). Her work has been screened and won awards internationally. This paper is a presentation of the Wellcome Trust funded collaborative project An Eyeful of Sound. The project was a collaborative one between synaesthetic people, researchers and film makers concerned with visually describing synaesthesia to a wider audience. The culmination of the project was a 10 minute animated documentary about what it is like to have audio-visual synaesthesia, directed by Samantha Moore in conjunction with Dr Jamie Ward, Tessa Verrecchia, Emma Suddaby and Julie Roxburgh. The presentation will look at the challenges of working on representing a unique brain state like synaesthesia through animation and the ways in which the information collected was collated and verified. It also discusses more generally the role of art and film in representing synaesthesia and the strengths and shortcomings of such representations. The animated film will be screened in full during the conference. Exploring how to communicate the synaesthesia experience a personal perspective. Jane Mills (Course Leader – Fashion & Textiles), University of Northampton ‘If when you are born you are given a pair of multi-coloured, bright sparkly and visually textured spectacles that you always wear what is that you view of the world compared to the view of other people’. Working in a creative environment in a University School of the Arts I am intrigued and inspired to explore the correlation between synaesthesia and creativity. How it affects my view of the world, interpretation of language, verbal communication, visual information and ultimately my decision-making? My talk will be an exploration to the question of how to communicate the synaesthete experience from a personal perspective and how having discovered that I am a synaesthete I became inspired to explore how it provides access to a visual experience that is completely unique to the individual. I will also focus on how or if the experience supports me in my professional working life in the creative industries and also whether there is any benefit in exploring it further. Obvious and „hidden“ synaesthesiae Dr. Jasmin Sinha; LUXEMBURG; www.synaisthesis. com Linguist, Project Manager, Publisher, Editor, Synaesthete (creation of publishing house SYNAISTHESIS in 2009) We don’t have to prove anymore whether synaesthesia exists or not. Many of its forms are well-known and have been studied extensively in the past few years, for example, grapheme-colour synaesthesia, coloured hearing, or number forms. For most synaesthetes, their synaesthesiae are an innate and natural part of their perceptions. Some may not even know that they have synaesthesia. Some may only notice it if it has distinctive markers that attract their attention. So it might be easy to perceive one’s grapheme-colour synaesthesia when the letters of the synaesthetic alphabet have striking – and stable –colours, or when not all letters are coloured and the alphabet thus seems to show an intra-systemic discrepancy. But how is it possible to perceive synaesthesiae that are unobtrusive, discreet, or variable? What if no intra-systemic difference can be observed? How can one focus on something that does not seem to provide any significant characteristics?