Issue 42 / March 2014

How does a lemon sound? No, I’m not offering one; I mean
the question very literally, as in how do you imagine the timbre,
the pitch, of a lemon? Given the choice, would a lemon scream
in a high, shrill voice or rumble like the quake of a bass drum?
Go on, think about it.
If you chose the former, you’re in good company. Most people
have this as a mild form of sensory association, aligning acidic
tastes with sounds that are purely conceptual, yet confident in their
place at the higher end of the musical scale. But does the flavour
of a lemon also have its own texture, or send colours flashing
across your eyes? And don’t say “yellow”. That’s cheating.
These kinds of overlapping experiential phenomena are very
rare indeed. It is a condition called synaesthesia that facilitates
them, an enhancement of neurological connections thought
to exist in anywhere between one in every few hundred or
few thousand people. Estimations vary so wildly because
the symptoms and their potency follow suit. Shapes, sounds
and smells can complement each other in myriad collisions,
uncovering dormant synaptic pathways for the unique reality
of the synaesthete. Ella Perry, a Masters student in Psychology
at Lancaster University, is intrigued by such possibilities. Ever
since flirting with art as an undergrad she’s been keen to find
something that shows our creative potential in the steady hands
of science. And it isn’t surprising when you look at the roster
of famous synaesthetes: Geoffrey Rush, Billy Joel and David
Hockney all have the condition, which has been through various
periods of research and analysis ever since its acknowledgment
by the scientific community in the mid-19th century. “It’s partly
to do with our evolution,” she tells me over coffee, a few days
before her own experiment is unveiled to the public. “Flavours
bidolito.co.uk
and environments are
definitely
interlinked.
Some studies suggest
that a child’s brain doesn’t
compartmentalise
information
as
effectively as an adult’s.
What we’re doing will be
quite womb-like...”
She’s preparing me for
the SYNAESTHESIA FEAST,
a five-course meal that
will be held in Camp and
Furnace’s Gold Room.
Marketed as a “culinary
bombardment of the
senses”, the idea has
germinated into a fullyfledged
collaboration
between
musicians,
visual artists and one
very talented chef, all determined to blow the doors of perception
wide open and invite diners to a night of self-discovery.
Charged with control of the night’s visual canvas is Jess Doyle:
as a DJ and a baker with a background in theatre design she
was scouted for the project by The Kazimier's Clarry Mowforth
who was instrumental in getting everyone on board. Jess
describes her style of projections as “vague and cinematic. You
can interpret it any way you want; the audience is meant to
step through it and it’s really difficult, in fact, to guide people’s
attention to certain tastes, sounds and images.” I ask if anything
like this has happened before. “There was a DJ in the Netherlands
or somewhere,” she says, “that designed sounds with a chef.
But nothing in this country that I know of.” For her, the feast
represents a playfulness that’s intrinsic to her work ethic; another
opportunity to cast off the “dark side” of serious performance in
favour of seeing the fun side of life, an outlook numbed by the
pressures of our society.
The same can be said of Simon Jones, a member of the Singing
Bowl Orchestra and a psychedelia enthusiast, who’s due to add
his DIY talents to the mix. Paying a visit to his house reveals a
grotto of hippy-ish minutiae, scattered rolling papers and a
few guys looking quizzically at half a dozen bowls in a garage.
Venues have tasked him before with grabbing the public by the
throat using ingenious art installations – one of his favourites
was a bouncy castle that responded to bounces by changing the
feedback loop of accompanying tunes. He finds the instrumental
qualities of balloons and combs fascinating and wishes he had
synaesthesia, if only to deepen his love for the abstract. “We feel
atomised in a way we never have before,” he says of the modern
world. “It’s great to analyse yourself and get self-absorbed
sometimes. Community vibes are also really precious, though.”
It seems this will be both.
The day of the feast arrives. I and around twenty-five others
are shepherded up to the chilly banquet table and greeted by
attendants in lab coats. There is an atmosphere of expectation
covering the room like a cloth. For the starter we are blindfolded
and given tempura vegetables seasoned with rosemary and
garlic, accompanied by dipping salts. They are crunchy, leaving
a strong aftertaste, the salt offsetting the texture of the batter.
The music for the first course weaves hypnotically round us, a
serene introduction resembling the womb-like intimacy I was
promised. Dish number two is all about contrast. A funky bisque
sitting alongside a crouton of goat’s cheese
and hazelnut pesto. The combination is bitter,
even slightly unpleasant, while someone
plays discordant chimes on those bowls
from the garage. I am aware of every bite,
the blindfold removed now, concentration
etched on my fellow diners’ faces.
The first experiments into synaesthesia
were carried out in the 60s. Since then,
interest in the condition has been revived
somewhat, thanks in no small part to
Oxford University professor Charles Spence,
who plied his subjects with beer. I wonder
what he’d make of this attempt to simulate
sensory correlation in your everyday foodie.
Certainly the atmosphere is impressive. Jess’
patterns splash across the walls, shifting
with the increasingly
darker
The
are
soundtrack.
flavours
consistently
challenging. We have
roasted
asparagus,
porcini mushrooms,
some bizarre sour
jelly.... As time goes
on there emerges a
divide between those
who chat to allay
the strangeness and
those who sit silently,
looking confused.
The night goes
out on a sweet note:
macaroons and tea,
served on wooden
stumps with All We
Are’s Richard O’Flynn
easing us into a state
of geniality through
his
soundscapes.
Apparently there was
an issue over the
proposed ‘immersive’ box that was meant to surround the
table. I catch Ella as people are leaving. “Was it too weird?”
she wonders. No, I say. Whether the menus on which we were
encouraged to record our experiences yield any synaesthetic
results is another matter. For a meal as bewildering as this,
we might need a re-run to truly appreciate what mysteries
our senses hide. Luckily for us this was merely Project Zero
for Synaesthesia Feast, with more sensory experiments
promised for the
future.
Fortunate
are we also to have
a city populated by
those so willing
to take chances
on
performance
art, that we might
have the perfect
environment
for
picking apart the
mind on ever-larger
scales.
facebook.com/
synfeast