[UNIT 3] STUDIO WORK MIDPONT
Synesthetic Loveletters is a new way of exchanging letters through synesthesia.
Love is a universal emotion, deeply intertwined with our senses and experienced through relationships. This project explores love as a shared, multisensory experience—reminding us of our humanity through the act of writing and receiving letters.
The digital world is dehumaising us. In an increasingly micropersonalised society, where communication between individuals seems to diminish, this subject feels relevant than ever. Algorithms driven by AI curate personalised content, isolating us even in shared spaces. With tools like ChatGPT, we often find ourselves interacting or communicating with tools or machines rather than each other. The Synesthetic Loveletters aims to remind us of our humanity—our ability to communicate using all our senses. By revisiting the methods of human communication, the project gave us a sense of shared experience and connection in a world growing ever more fragmented due to the medium’s transformation through technological advancement.
Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan, 1964
The letters are for the people who are experiencing a decline in meaningful communication with one another OR who are reducing communication because of the personalised world.
My exploration at CSM began with a interest in sonic experiences, leading me to experiment with various ways of engaging with sound. This exploration was expanded into creating sound symbols and emphasising their symbolic meanings, ultimately aiming to create sound as a new method of communication. This ongoing enquiry into sensory expression has shaped my approach as a communication designer, guiding me toward multi-sensory design as a ways of fostering emotional and tangible connections.
Exploration 01 l Sounds to Colours
Practice #1
Practice #2
Practice #3
Practice #4
Practice #5
As an initial step toward multi-sensory design in this projection unit, I practiced different methods of forming sensory connections. The first practices allow participants to explore different ways of transforming sensory input—in here, sound. It translates speech through a microphone into various colours, functioning more as a translation or transaction than direct communication.
Practice 02 l Letterbox of mom’s lullaby
For 02 practice, I asked my mother to send me a sensory letter in a way she had never done before, and she responded with a lullaby. I then categorised it by sensory modality, creating a Sensory Letter Box. This exercise examined how a single source can transform through different sensory variations.
Through previous practices and reflections, Synesthetic Loveletters was conceived. These love-filled letters engage multiple senses, reminding us of how we perceive and feel as human being. They also remind us that, despite our differences, we are connected through shared experiences and relationships.
Invitation to daughters
In the first episode, I focus on the love and relationship between mothers and daughters. Daughters around the world receive a Synesthetic Loveletters invitation from a mother. And they can feel, read, or hear Synesthetic Loveletter through their senses. They respond, but not with text; instead, they reply using only sensory elements—fragments of scent, photographs, pieces of music or something else. These responses, expressed in sensory language, are then sent back as letters to mothers around the world.
This letter is not text-based, we experience gaps in the story of letter. But these gaps are not empty spaces; instead, they become an invitation for participants to fill them with their own memories and senses. As each person imagines their own narrative, the letter takes on new meanings, creating a richer, more personal sensory experience. This letter does not end with a single exchange. Each response is passed on to another person randomly, continuing the cycle and forming new connections through shared sensory experiences. As the letter keeps moving, we continuously experience an overlapping of different memories and senses, expanding the conversation beyond individual relationships.
Love letters keep circulating. On the website, find the love letters from your relationships and write a reply to loveletters@dain.work !
END? Throughout CSM coursework, my understanding has been deepened how sensory experiences extend beyond the visual studying their potential to take form in the physical world. My position as graphic communicator, at its core, is the expression of language through tangible forms. So, my aim through this letters is to create shared experiences that connect people across cultures and communities through multi-sensory design.
[1] Please Touch / The World Out Sight, Jiwon Park, 2011, Practice Reference [2] Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, Text Reference [3] How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day, Tristan Harris, 2017, Text Reference [4] Sound of the Earth Chapter: 3, Yuri Suzuki, 2022, Practice Reference [5] Essence in Space, Chang Hee Lee, 2013, Practice Reference [6] “Lickestra” by Emilie Baltz, Carla Diana, and Arone Dyer, 2017, Practice Reference