Artist
Laura lives with an extraordinary sensory condition Synesthesia; a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
With its name deriving from the Greek, meaning to perceive together" this phenomenon comes in many varieties and in Laura's case, this is most acutely experienced in the colours and shapes that she sees in sound, particularly when listening to music.
For Laura, music is filled with colour, shape and physical form, which "makes a sort of map or journey" when she listens.
Laura J Harris describes her experience below:
"With many pieces of music (and lyrical/choral songs too), I see the colours - and I always feel that I don't have enough of a vocabulary for these colours to do justice to what it is I actually see and feel - but, I also experience a sense of touch; either how a particular colour might feel if I were able to reach out to touch it - like the pink frosted glass in "Nuvole Bianche" - or the much stronger experience that I CAN actively feel the physical presence of something like a heavy velvet or the twists of a rope in my hands or on my skin.
At times, certain sounds also produce a sense of a smell and taste. As strange as it might sound, this can apparently be very specific; such as the experience I have when listening to a set of complementing voices which (in that particular case) produces the taste/smell of hot buttered toast and tomato soup!"