"Rare Possibility of Seeing Soundwaves" is an experimental approach to sound studies. The project explores a universe where human perception is capable of seeing soundwaves. What difference does this might have brought to our urban life and architecture? A series of physical and digital studies were made to form a topography of sounds.
The expanding ability to perceive, process and represent urban big data through different senses, generates a metaphorical bond with the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia and the definition of “Synesthete City” derives immediately. However, before mining through this definition and its possibilities, we must gather an insight of synesthesia, synesthetes, and synesthetic experience. Richard Cytowic (2003) explains synesthesia as “a stimulation of one sensory modality automatically triggers perception in a second modality in the absence of any direct stimulation to this second modality” in his article named “Synesthesia: A Union of Senses.”
The individuals who are experiencing synesthesia are called synesthetes. (Cytowic, 2003) Also, while Marco Frascari (2003) explains how it is to be a synesthete, he mentions a brief history of the phenomenon; During the early 1900s, The Russian Neurologist A.R. Luria found out that one of his patients was a synesthete that experienced words as having tastes. The patient once said, "Taste and weight. Something oily slipping through the hand." and upon hearing a specific sound pitch, “saw a brown strip against a dark background that had red tongue-like edges" and tasted it as "sweet and sour .“
