Alice in Wonderland Exhibition

I decided to take a trip to London to visit the Alice in Wonderland pop up exhibition at the British Library. I have always taken an interest in the Lewis Carroll classic as it was something I read as a child. The original illustrations by John Tenniel show the true nature of the character Alice, which is more dark and mysterious, unlike the way Alice is depicted in the later Disney versions. Among the exhibition there were the original diaries and books written by Lewis Carroll filled with notes and stories of Alice. There were also different illustrations by different artists who had interpreted both Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the looking glass. I was surprised to find that among those artists was Salvador Dali. When I had planned the visit to the Alice in Wonderland exhibition I was merely going out of personal interest. But the paintings, which are the one of Dali's rarest collections, are vivid and unusual yet they perfectly encapsulate the dream like state of the Alice in Wonderland stories.

When building the website and choosing the content for the images and films I am unsure of how to develop ideas. I want everything on the website to be relevant to the realm of synaesthesia rather than just do images for the sake of doing images. The Salvador Dali images are a perfect example of an interpretation of story. The technique of melted colours and made up creatures are Dali's exploration of the classic tale. Using this concept I want to apply this to the images I create. So by taking an element of a synaesthetes encounter I will create an image that explores and emphases that. 

I also want to think about it in reverse. So by creating an image concept from scratch and then seeing how a synaesthete would react- What colours, emotions, tastes does the image evoke? Does it call upon memory recall? Do you understand the image? But also applying the same questions to a non synaesthete. So when I create my first few images, create a survey with the images and put it to both groups of people and compare the reactions. I will also think about the comparison in images that are based on people's experiences against the ones I have created myself.

The exhibition really opened my eyes to the possibility of interpretation. How so many artists could interpret one story and how different the illustrations are. I want to create this type of versatility on my website. Moving forward from this point I want to begin exploring the idea of taking the information from the Synaesthesia Facebook page and seeing what I can create from that. 

As you can see from the images, they are extremely abstract and they are open for so much interpretation which is an attribute I admire and one I wish to portray through my website. The colours and shapes are so beautiful and never exact, unlike a lot of art it isn't telling the viewer how to feel, it is just letting the viewer make their own decisions.