Synaesthesia Magazine Nonsense | Page 46

On 5th February, Synaesthesia Feast held their first major project - Project Zero, a five-course feast of the senses.

Held at the Camp & Furnace in Liverpool, UK, Project Zero was an immersive and heightened dining experience; five courses of creative and stimulating food coupled with music and visuals by local artists. Each artist followed guidelines based on psychological research to a form a 'weak synaesthesia' for participants.

Each artist tasted food created by chef Gina Tsang, from an exciting vegetarian menu created especially for this event, and asked to envisage its properties in to music and visuals. The result was a holistic dining experience, satisfying not only the taste buds, but audio and visual senses, touch and smell.

We caught up with Gina after the event to see how she got on...

How did you tie food and the senses together?

We decided to focus on the five main flavours that correspond to the five basic tastes: salty, bitter, umami, sour and sweet. One for each course, to keep it simple. In turn, we looked for correlations with visual sense and auditory sense.

Ella sent us some research that showed correspondences between perceptions of certain colours and sounds based on different flavours, such as brass sounds and yellow for sourness. There was also research on correspondences between particular discreate