site details
this site came into being on monday 13 january 2003.
it's written by hand, in notepad. all graphics are created by myself, in psp and ms photo editor. thanks to sam horsley i'm now free from the horrors of geocities, and am hosted by him at twistedlittledreams.com.
the name
hypersynesthesia - the name comes from a condition that i have called synesthesia. it's estimated that 1 in 2000 people experience it. it's a condition where the senses are conjoined; stimulation of one sense triggers reactive stimulation of other senses - some people associate smells with colours, others feel sounds... some have multiple associations.
in my case i associate words, letters and some sounds with colours - my mind has long associated particular letters of the alphabet with particular colours, that don't change - e.g. "m" has always been emerald/forest green, "p" has always been sky blue; my alphabet is not only a sequence of letters, but a colour spectrum. it's not a particularly psychedelic experience - though it may be for others - for me, the colours of each letter and word are simply attributes as basic as the shape of the letter or the construction of the word.
i used the name for the site [edited slightly because synesthesia was taken] because writing and sketching/painting have always been an integral part of me; i started reading and drawing pretty early as a child, and haven't stopped since. finding out about synesthesia gave me an idea of why the lexical quality of words and the colourful imagery of art are so much a part of me - in my mind, the two are vitally linked. synesthesia plays a large part in my musically-inspired work, as i'm interested in expressing the experience of sound through visual imagery.
design
i wanted a fairly simple, basic layout. my other site is quite fiddly and design-orientated... this site is more functional.
the images on the menu and on the front page are both taken from a test photo i took when i got a new camera recently. the full image can be found in the photography section, among the clink st photographs.