Translator: Hana Colucci Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
What does this say to you?
Does it say [TEDxBrixton]?
Is it red? Is it black?
This is what I see.
I thought that everyone saw the world like this.
That was until I was diagnosed with synaesthesia.
Visualization, my first language, before speech.
I found this out seven years ago, when I was 32.
I was studying a cross-discipline MA in design and fashion.
I started writing my 22,000 word dissertation,
when everyone was invited for a dyslexia test.
The results were not conclusive,
and I was referred to a learning psychologist for five hours of tests.
They were really interesting,
and I learnt about my visualization skills.
So, synaesthesia.
It comes from the Greek word for 'joined perception'.
It's a crisscrossing of the senses.
It creates this heightened state of sensual awareness.
There are four main types of synaesthesia:
There's Gustav synaesthesia, where colour translates into text.
You've got audio-tactile synaesthesia,
where you hear the sound and you feel the texture.
There's colour-grapheme synaesthesia, where you visualize colours and numbers,
brightly, moving in front of you, in colour, sometimes with character.
And then you also have number synaesthesia,
which is just the numbers as colours perceived as patterns.
Like this.
The number one, I see as an I.
He's had his head above his shoulders.
He's androgynous.
Six and seven are like a large circle,
they've been separated from each other, like a yin and a yang.
The number seven is always yellow,
that's how I see him when he's calculated above;
he's like a James Bond.
And five is red.
So, red plus Bond would equal
12 drummers drumming, from the 12 days of Christmas.
Through having synaesthesia,
I found that it has affected me in different ways.
For example, with number calculations,
I see the numbers floating above in front of me;
they literally appear in front of me, flashing around like that.
I could not remember them, sometimes it's hard to keep them still.
There's lots of things that help.
For example, these glasses that I wear.
When I wear them, they stop the numbers and letters
jumping off the page and hooking into each other.
They also slow the information coming in and out.
The other thing that they do
is they allow my brain to process the information.
How the synaesthesia affects me is that -
A psychologist said
it's like I've got three huge visual DVD libraries in my head.
So for example, 30 terabytes.
One, two, three.
And what happens is my brain works like a Google search.
My brother is an automotive designer; this was his idea.
So with Google, you type something in the search box,
you get an answer, you get page one.
With me,
I get all five pages at once. Voom!
(Sighs)
And so, it's really hard to process the information.
I've only got two gigabytes of working memory here,
and then the process is going up and down at light speed.
And so it's hard to retain all the information.
The other thing with synaesthesia is that it can affect your everyday life.
I mean, I could be going along on my bicycle,
and then suddenly, I'll notice the positive and negative buildings,
the space between them,
the black and the white.
I'll hone in on a colour, I'll see a texture.
On the brick it will be, I don't know, like the texture in a woven yarn,
in an Irish Mohair or a tweed,
something that I've seen in a menswear suit.
And then I'll notice the maple-coloured leaves,
I'll see the maple-coloured trees,
I'll get the taste, the texture of maple in someone's voice.
I'll get the maple syrup on the pancakes,
I'll get the blueberries,
I'll get the cream,
I'll get the bounce of the pancake and the cake fork
bouncing against the pancake, into the porcelain all at once,
and it's just yummy!
Oh, delicious.
So, what's the other things ...
Well, the other thing with this synaesthesia -
it sometimes interrupts your processes.
So, for example,
with design,
with this braille idea:
How this happened, I was in hospital a few year ago,
and the doctors wanted to take out my appendix.
I wanted to keep it in. I was too busy. I had too much to do.
And I started to think about
if I was blind, how would I understand colour?
How would I describe colour to a blind person?
Perhaps with braille.
I started to sketch in my sketchbook,
textures, colours, trying to understand it.
If I described color to them like this, would you put braille across it?
Across a man's chest?
Any excuse to feel. Hmm.
So then, if you've got red at one end of the colour spectrum,
which is hot, that could be described as your hand in hot water.
And if blue is at the other end of the colour spectrum,
and that's cold, like ice in your hand,
then purple, how would I describe purple?
It would be like the sensation of your hand in hot chocolate.
And the scent illuminates it.
Another way synaesthesia has affected my design process
is through combinations,
like this.
This design is a kimono jacket.
It's based on two heritage wax block prints here.
It's a Ghanaian street food called yam and pepper soup.
You have the heat of the fuchsia here in the colour,
and then in the print, you have the crayfish,
the shrimps, and the crabs that you find in the soup.
The print's actually called Water World.
In another part in Ghana, the same print is also called Pig's Feet
because sometimes they put pigs' jaw into the soup,
which is a sweaty-meaty addition that you'd find in a local chop bar.
The other ingredient in Ghanaian pepper soup is yam.
This is actually a yam flower print,
which is lavender blue and navy here.
If you've not had yam before, it's like a fibrous potato.
So the two together tell you the story about Ghanaian pepper soup.
The fluffy yam floats not too lovely in the hot pepper soup,
and you get the visual flavour all together in the jacket.
The other thing I can tell you about synaesthesia
is I have audio-tactile synaesthesia.
How this comes out
is that, well ...
When I was little, my dad used to play records,
and I would listen to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, panpipes,
anything, really - classical, Irish Celtic,
and then he would let me change the frequencies.
He would let me change the RPM to 45, to 33, to 75.
And I would hear the sounds change.
Because I have audio-tactile synaesthesia, music really affects me.
Especially the vibrating dance floor at Fabric nightclub.
(Chuckles)
The opposite of that is music can heighten your awareness
and stimulate you positively as well as negatively.
On the other side, when my brothers want to rush me out of the house,
they play 'Requiem for a Dream',
and my youngest brother just says, 'Come on. She's getting distracted.
Play the track.'
And I just turn into stormtrooper mode, and we rush out the house.
So how has this affected me?
Well,
apart from the tools, like these glasses,
I also have a screen tint on my Mac
that I use to process and slow things down.
Then, there's also tools like an inspiring software,
which does quick five thoughts, so mindmapping,
when the thoughts are coming in and out of my brain really fast,
and I used it to create the TEDx slide that you saw earlier.
In terms of design, synaesthesia has really informed me.
I started to take the perception of synaesthesia,
and at first, I found it difficult to handle.
At first, it seemed as though it was a disorder to me.
The joined perception of synaesthesia meant that it gave me something.
It changed my perception in the last year
of seeing it as a disorder,
and instead, it became my super-ability.
I've thought that it should become the cape by which I fly,
like Neo in the Matrix,
when he's looking for people like him to wake them up.
So you've had a glimpse of my multi-faceted world
and how synaesthesia has began to shape my design.
In this slide,
you can see the third project that I've been working on.
It's to do with music and sound waves,
and this concept.
So when listening to the music,
and feeling the sounds and the colour,
the prints below are the textures and colours that came out
from me listening to lots of music tracks.
You've got the bright-coloured, sherbet, zig-zag sounds;
you've got the orange and red, pink lightsaber glows;
you've got these turquoise membranes that are like ...
dragonflies' wings bouncing in the beats;
you've got the membranes of these wings going, the rhythms flowing
like licorice,
floating up with mint tea, with drops of orange blossom water
in the desert of sunset sands and happy smiles.
Synaesthesia has changed my perception
of something from being a disability into a super-ability.
I think that synaesthesia, or disabilities in general,
in other people should be brought out.
I perceive that their abilities should become their super-abilities,
the lights by which they shine.
With all my visualization abilities,
I didn't see that -
that synaesthesia was something that was good for me
or enhanced my abilities.
It took some on the outside to tell me that about myself.
In the future, I've been thinking about studying synaesthesia more,
and perhaps doing a creative Ph.D,
maybe with some science and consciousness.
And one of the things I've been creating at the moment is this idea.
I've got a record player in my kitchen.
And what I've been thinking about?
Scratch and sniff fabric.
Thank you.
(Applause)