This is the latest in a series of articles and illustrations from our new special edition publication New Cartography. The magazine offers readers a fresh and alternative take on mapping the urban environment through a collection of articles and illustrations from a wide array of contributors. The complete magazine can be viewed here.
This series of drawings explores how my personal experience of synaesthesia contributes to the way I perceive the urban environment. In my mind sounds are experienced as visual recordings of external stimuli: music and the everyday hustle and bustle of the location are transcribed in series of layered lines, marks and colours. There is also a strong spatial aspect to this perception: synaesthesia structures my thinking by creating mental maps of sound, language and numbers, which I think of as occupying a physical space around my body. The overlapping of observational and traced studies in combination with more gestural, intuitive marks allows me to depict my experience of time spent in an urban location.
The article was commissioned by The New Wolf for New Cartography – an IdeasTap-sponsored magazine.
