Welcome to the Experiencing Synesthesia Scavenger Hunt
Congratulations-- you have located step one of Amy Koumis's 2013 Senior EDP Capstone Project. Most likely you have arrived here by scanning the QR code on the third floor of Shwayder Art Building. If not, then you must be some sort of wizard, because this is not an easy bit of internet to find. Hence the "scavenger hunt" part.
Before we begin, here is some background about the project, me, and synesthesia. I can sense you are about to skip ahead, but please resist; there is some stuff in here that will help you understand the trip on which you are about to embark. I promise I'll keep it brief.
Me: I am a senior in the EDP program at DU, double majoring in the former and studio art. I have been an artist all my life: I began by filling up reams of that awful printer paper with the tear-off strips on the sides with my terrible crayon princesses and cats, improved ever so slightly as I branched into mediums like watercolor, ceramics and Photoshop (is that a medium?) and finally arrived at a hesitant merger of the digital and analog. I find a certain thrill in liberating my art, which has led me to distribute for free everything from massive oil paintings to ceramic mice to entire from-scratch websites, all for gratis. I believe deep in my bones that art is valuable, but at the same time, valueless. It is only as worthy as the worth we ascribe to it. Still with me? Great.
On to synesthesia: This is a condition where a person experiences sounds, smells, and other experiences as visual or mental "images." Sounds have shapes, numbers have personalities, names have colors. As someone who has always had this condition, I was well used to slamming doors appearing in my mind as green squares, the smell of onions as light purple clouds, and the letter W as old and slighlty grumpy. I remember being shocked to learn not everyone saw the world this way, and immediately wanted to shar my experiences somehow. Which leads me to my project.
The Project:
But how to share synesthesia? I considered the question and concluded that the best way to show how a synesthetic experience works was to recreate it visually, by seeing through someone else's eyes. For a day I would document what I saw and felt, and then represent those images through still pictures, words and animation. For this, I recorded videos of a few locations I visited every day-- Jazzman's, Driscoll Hall, the Ritchie Center-- and added in the shapes and colors I saw with each sound. Because smells aren't easy to capture on video, however, I made note of what smells there were (if any) in the captions. There are six of these videos in six locations around the school, each with their own page documenting the experience, accesible by a QR code. Each page also has a map with lat/long coordinates and a hint directing participants to the next code/page. And because this is a scavenger hunt, there will be a prize at the end of the sixth page. It may or may not be candy.
The first map is below. If all goes well, it will take you in a circle back to SAB. If not... well, have some candy anyway. It's on me.
-Amy
Update 4/13/2013:
As this project is now completed, I'm posting the links to the rest of the scavenger hunt for reference below. Enjoy.
Begin here:
View 1 in a larger map