Creating a Visual Language: From Conversation to Creation

How do you begin to turn someone else’s sensory world into something others can see?

That's a question I have been asking myself throughout this whole co-collaboration process. Louie experiences sound in ways others couldn't even imagine, that is part of Chromesthesia's charm, and a big reason i find the condition so fascinating. Her world is already so visual, but translating that inner experience into a shared artwork isn’t as simple as picking colours and textures. We’ve had to create our own shared language.

Our process has been continuous long, open conversations, I quickly learned that part of creating a visual language is also creating space to listen, without rushing to translate straight away. Her experience is so unique, and difficult at times for her to explain, sometimes the descriptions was so precise, “jagged lines pulsing in sync with the bass" and other occasions her descriptions were vague and Id have to interpret her visuals from key words or phrases she used.

What I love about this process is that it’s not about me representing her experience from the outside. It’s about building something together, a visual toolkit that’s as much hers as it is mine. In that way, the work becomes more than just translation; it becomes a true co-collaboration.

Our Process

Once our understanding of the visual language felt solid enough, we began using it to create pieces together. The process is simple in theory but full of nuance in practice: we put on a song, and as it plays, we both paint, separately but side by side, using the same themes, patterns, shapes and colours, Louie has frequently described.

If she’s told me that a particular drum beat translates as sharp silver sparks, I would pull out metallic paint. If a bassline moves in slow, heavy waves, I’ll let the brush glide in long arcs. She does the same, but entirely from her own perception her own chromesthetic vision, but in real time.

It’s fascinating to compare the two paintings afterwards. Sometimes they’re remarkably similar, echoing the same shapes and colours almost exactly. Other times, they diverge completely, showing how even with a shared “language,” our personal interpretations still filter through. Those differences are just as valuable as the similarities; they show the complexity of translating one person’s sensory world into a shared, co-created artwork.

Every painting we make adds another word, another phrase, to the language we’re building. It’s a process that’s never truly finished each song opens a new conversation, or witty statement that describes her experience in her own quirky way.

From the mark-making sessions, where we both responded intuitively to sound through drawing, I created a larger piece that I then cut up and reassembled as a collage. The collage itself was shaped to reflect what Louie described seeing: a soundwave form. To push this further, I layered a jagged, heart-rate–like line over the top using a sewing machine, the process of combining collage with stitched marks gave the work a tactile, physical energy, mirroring the movement and intensity of her chromesthetic perceptions.

Through this experiment, I was not only translating her descriptions into a physical form but also beginning to build a system of shared marks, textures, and shapes that can act as the foundations of a visual language. After spending so much time working digitally with ferrofluids and projections, it felt grounding to return to cutting, collaging, and stitching by hand.