In the contemporary landscape of sound art, cross-sensory research, affect theory, environmental humanities, and immersive installation practices increasingly intersect, offering artists new modes of expression. Against this evolving backdrop, Synesthetic Weather emerges from one central inquiry: What if emotions were no longer treated as internal psychological events, but externalized as spatial, navigable environmental phenomena? It is precisely this conceptual shift—from “mind to space,” from “emotion to climate”—that establishes the foundational direction of the work.
This concept arises from two converging research pathways. The first comes from Atmospheric Aesthetics. Aesthetic theorists such as Gernot Böhme and Tonino Griffero argue that atmospheres are “perceptual fields suspended between subject and object,” neither purely material nor purely subjective, but emotive spaces that are present and experientially felt. Böhme describes atmospheres as “tuned spaces” capable of directly shaping perception; Griffero further proposes that atmospheres possess “affective force,” able to attract, pressure, or alter the posture of bodies. Together, their theories guide the transformation of emotion from a psychological category into a spatialised environmental phenomenon.
The second research pathway comes from soundscape theory and acoustic ecology. R. Murray Schafer’s soundscape framework conceptualises environmental sound as a structural force that shapes behaviour, perception, and mood. Meanwhile, Brandon LaBelle’s investigations into the relationship between sound and space highlight sound’s inherent “porosity”—its ability to permeate bodies, diffuse through air, and redefine spatial awareness. These insights revealed that sound is uniquely suited to constructing “emotional climates,” as it is naturally spatial, temporal, and atmospheric.
The work defines four emotional zones—Anger, Confusion, Sadness, and Calm—not only based on psychological categorisation but on artistic potential. These emotions are distinct yet frequently interwoven in lived experience. Thus, I conceive of them as four “weather systems,” allowing visitors not to observe emotion but to enter it and coexist with it.
The term “synesthetic” does not refer to clinical synesthesia but to a strategy of cross-sensory integration. Sound, light, airflow, temperature, and spatial configuration interact to shape each emotion as a multidimensional sensory system. The installation therefore functions not as a single-medium artwork but as a multisensory climate model.
Synesthetic Weather also reflects the cultural nature of emotion. While Western psychology typically frames emotion as an internal, individual state, many non-Western cultures understand emotion as relational, situational, or externally manifested. To conceptualize emotion as weather is to place it within a more open, fluid, and culturally inclusive ecological framework. Synesthetic Weather is an experiment in emotional meteorology—an exploration of how emotions can be transformed into spaces that one can move through, inhabit, and breathe within.