Brainstorm Ideas

After picking out a painting that stood out strongly to us, we sat down the very next day to try and unload all the ideas we had and make sense of them. We knew that we wanted to revolve it around colours, as well as the thought about Synaesthesia. And below were the meeting minutes of the points we discussed as well as some visuals for inspiration while we prepped for the tutorial. 

Production Meeting

29/9/16

With the theme of perspectives, colours and Synaesthesia, we looked into what Synaesthesia is in the first place.

Synaesthesia- neurological condition

• Synaesthesia is a condition where a sensation in one of the senses, such as hearing, triggers a sensation in another, such as taste.
• For example, some people with synaesthesia can taste numbers or hear colours. A wide range of different synaesthetic experiences have been reported and recorded – a typical example is someone who described experiencing the colour red every time he heard the word "Monday”. 
• Taste, sound and touch may all produce colours.

How is it experienced?

• most common synaesthetic experiences are associating days, months, numbers and the alphabet.
• patterns or shapes (for example, envisaging the months laid out in lines, spirals or circles)
• distinctive colours – for example, "A" may be red and "B" may be blue
• Taste can also produce colour sensations, or shapes that can be "felt".
• Certain odours may also be perceived as shapes and/or colours, but this form of synaesthesia is thought to be rare.
• Some people experience touch just by looking at someone being touched.
• Feelings of pain or touch can also trigger visions or colour

We also looked into videos and short films around the topic of Synaesthesia for a glimpse of what's it like.

• Really cute animation short of how they interpreted Synaesthesia from the senses of sound to colours for different ages: https://vimeo.com/36252713

             

Synaesthesia from Nikko Hull on Vimeo.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHnnGHgeyC0 - A short narrative-style film attempting to visually portray synaesthesia.

           

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4upZHjZnM-0 - Synaesthesia explanation

• BBC covers an installation about experiencing synaesthesia and and interview about how it works for someone http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33803581

Main Ideas Brainstorm

With that in mind we were gearing to go and immediately started bouncing ideas off each other of what kind of moving image we wanted to do.

• 90 Second experimental documentary attempting to get inside the mind of a synaesthete/providing a visual representation of a synaesthetic experience and presenting it as a fairly euphoric sensation. (Not necessarily using traditional documentary conventions)
• Person stood in a dark (studio-lit) room experiencing the blending of senses, by feeling colour and seeing sounds, potentially using paint and other coloured objects (splattered on the subject) to symbolise this; the build up of layers representing the fixed nature of sensorial pairings
• Ambient/reverby sounds to portray the idea of the experience being trapped in the mind, with various new sounds introduced with every new colour?
• Super-slow mo’s to make it feel immersive
• Playing around with the idea of a shot of the brain and its neurological paths lighted up in colours
• Documenting a person going through their everyday life (eg waking up, brushing teeth at work etc), seeing it the way they do, also experiencing their form of senses being blended and being hit by ‘sounds’, like the dark room but through mundane activities. (eg He’s in bed and the first thing he hears is his alarm clock and poof goes a colour in his face) Thought may be logistically tough and the colours won’t have the same kind of impact in the dark room, but could be another take to it!

Inspiration for the Look and Feel

We then continued to look into how we want it to look like taking in inspiration from photographs, videos and art pieces for ideas.

A creative portrait photography project by Ars Thanea, Photography by: Szymon Swietochowski http://www.wabbaly.com/ars-thanea-creative-portrait-photography/

Slow Motion videos with colours and paint as its central piece:

In Short Form...

Along with the rest of the meeting we also briefly touched on logistics and websites designs as below in our meeting minutes:

• Showed each other website designs
• Theme - perspectives, colour, maybe children, we couldn't decide on what age groups perspective to explore, had the thought about looking through the eyes of someone as they grow up.
• Synesthesia - relate a colour to a feeling
• website design- colourful, paint handprints ?, mixing senses- shapes, each tab for a different sense,
• Ideas; throw different coloured paints at a person, slo mo and rewind back to them being plain
• Need to find a person willing to have paint thrown on them, skin coloured clothes, very natural
• Brain, each section lights up with different colour ,
• Picked our image for inspiration
• ‘I may see things differently’