weird connections

Elisa Briones + Ine Marie Vassøy

What does the word tractor taste like? Is the metaphor between strawberries and tractors common to you?

yellow green blue red orange blue green red purple yellow magenta black red orange white black purple red blue Try to say out loud the name of the color of the words, and not the word itself. Does your senses get mixed? Do you notice that the right half of your brain is trying to say the color, while the left side of your brain is trying to say the word?

what color is this music?

And what about this colour? Does it sounds like music?

S Y N E S H T E S I A

What we are trying to communicate is Synesthesia, a neurological condition that mix senses.

There is found more than 60 kinds of synesthesia today, and the synesthetic library is still expanding. This particular installation called Weird Connections is focusing on one type of synesthesia: the mix of sound and colors.

The synesthetic perception of the world is different and unique for every person. But scientists claim to have found some tendencies with the different types of synthesia.

Take for an example these two shapes. Which shape would you call Kiki, and which will you call Buba? Yes, there are tendencies, because the metaphors often relates to something you have experienced once in life. We live on the same planet, and people have a lot more in common than we are aware of:)

We started to sketching out different ways to communicate color-sound synesthesia to people, and different ways for people to interact and visualize sound.

With color and sound synesthesia bright color is often a metaphor for high pitch, and dark color for low pitch. Weird Connections is based on these relationships.

So what we did was to create an experience where the audience can get the feeling of how mixing the senses can color the world...

and to look through the eyes of someone else!

We want to invite people to participate and interact to create beautiful motion graphic and visualize sound.

why is it fun?

Weird Connections is colorful, explorative, personalized and educational. The user gets immediate response and the opportunity of exploring an unusual situation.

So explore the color of your voice!

why does it look like it does?

How does it work? We have translated processing code into beautiful graphics. Input = voice. Output = motion graphics.

Figure out which color are you!

Elisa Briones + Ine Marie Vassøy