The Foramen began from the discourse that surrounds the phenomena synesthesia, and the way in which subjects are emotionally perceived based on the experiences from having this phenomena. Synesthesia is described medically as a cross-over of the senses, or to quote Wikipedia: ‘a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway’.
For example, all numbers and letters, for me, are a colour and have a personality. E.g.
– 6 is pink and a female character who is young, intelligent and quiet
– 5 is red and a male character who is arrogant and naive
– 1 is light blue and a unisex character who is god-like or omnipotent
– N is green and a unisex character who is confident yet humble
– C is yellow and a female character who is middle aged and wise
– I is white and a male character who is indifferent and quiet
However it does go further than this on occasion, and it isn’t as easy to pick up on and often fluctuates in potency, such as, the static from when you turn the TV on sounds like white with stripes of grey and soap tastes like bright green. Also, Tuesday is yellow, pylons are male and my phone is purple (even though it’s black). But, despite this, the most curious and interesting form of it comes from the immediate generation of personalities and characters from inanimate objects or concepts.
The ‘Foramen’ (Latin for ‘Hole’), have been created to help stimulate these fusions of experience. I have made them with quite a simple yet collective shape, that together, creates a little community of like-appearanced forms that can only be differentiated by slight differentiations in their curves. Because we are social creatures, humans are programmed to recognise other humans as an intuition to survive and reproduce. It is because of this that I feel that there is an element of synesthesia in everyone that would try to understand these forms as having human characteristics, and because they do have slight differences in shape, we try to also differentiate their personalities as we recognise them as different beings.
Because of this, I hope that they will provide a playful stimulus that interacts with how the objects are comprehended, and thus can be used to stimulate characters, personalities and narratives, resulting in scenarios and concepts of the most banal meaning to be transformed into interactive and reflective moments.
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Emma Denby 