Project Abstract
An Exploration of Synesthesia and Sound Visualization Through The Use of Non-Traditional Materials
I have placed one of these non- traditional materials on each seat. I invite you to see and
feel some of the objects I have been working intimately with for the past 5 months. You are welcome to keep them.
This body of work explores the ways in which I experience the colorful world of synesthesia. Synesthesia is a fancy word that describes when you experience one of your senses through the other. I experience a form of it that causes me to visualize sounds.
During the COVID 19 pandemic I spent much more time listening to music than I have any other period in my life. This led me to experience synesthesia much more frequently. It began to serve as a coping mechanism for all of the chaos that was happening in the world. I felt that recreating my sound visualization experiences in my thesis project would offer me an outlet to better understand the way my mind processes auditory and visual information.
I decided to create works that depict the 3 music genres that are most visually stimulating for me in terms of color; music of the string family, music with deep bass and high frequency electronic music. These pieces are accompanied by a playlist that contains some of my favorite examples of these genres.
Artist Statement
Taylor Evans is a 24 year old emerging artist who currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her studio work is multimedia. While she has primarily worked as apinter, she is currently exploring new and unconventional mediums. Evans has previously used her practice to explore the abstraction of biological forms, focusing mainly on flora and fauna. She is currently investigating her experiences with synesthesia and sound visualization using non-traditional mediums. Evans creates compositions that depict the ways in which she visualizes specific genres of music. She has chosen to use unconventional materials in her work as an alternative to mediums that had previously been negatively impacting her health.
