An invitation to learn about synaesthesia and its forms of expression, to reflect on and talk about your own perception.

Shapes appear and move around you when you listen to music? The days of the week have colours? ... When you try to explain the concept of synaesthesia to someone who has never heard of it before, you are often met with astonishment, suspicion, interest, or a mixture of all of these. What does it look like? Always? That must be disturbing! Synaesthesia quickly tests the limits of imagination of those who don´t experience it. Paradoxically, many synaesthetes are not even aware of their special way of perceiving because they consider it completely normal. Nevertheless the discovery of their own synaesthetic perception is a turning point for many of them. The individual exploration of it is not as simple as one might think. To be able to become aware of a merged perception at all, one must first mentally take it apart. It can be deeply confusing to realise how much of our experience is, and has always been, unique to ourself. With the recognition of the synaesthetic components of a sensation, everything comes together again, familiar and often with a sense of coherence and completeness. Such awareness allows synaesthetes to fully enjoy the benefits of their way of perceiving, and to understand the impact of the synaesthetic connections that have been made: they have shaped our identity and influenced our relationship with everyday things and actions. And they will continue to do so. Talking about our perception provides exciting and often surprising insights into the respective experience of both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. We can only become aware of the differences when we talk about things and compare, which rarely happens. Time to change. Time to talk!