The phenomenon of synæsthesia has been known for almost 300 years, but today it is still regarded exclusively as a neurological disorder that has, for some afflicted artists, writers, and musicians such as Kandinsky, Nabokov, and Scriabin, resulted in creative expressions. The process of transfer of data from one sense to another has been mapped and compared, but little attention has been given to the way in which individual senses work in a synæsthetic way to create a "heraldic" or "hieroglyphic" sense of the Real. Even in the case of language, synæsthesia as a "radical mimesis of matter" is present at the formative level where, as Ferdinand de Saussure put it, "sound meets thought." As meaning is subsequently formalized, the sensual basis is codified and sublimated as an "artifact," obscuring the process by which mind appropriates matter. Only by returning to the mimetic level - evident most particularly in works of architecture and art - can something like synæsthesia be seen to have a more general and widespread role. The majority of approaches to synæsthesia depend on a critical model that presumes that the "data" of one sense is "mapped" onto another in synæsthetic episodes. Yet, synæsthetes do not agree on any pattern or code that matches the certainty each experiences. Rather than argue such points as "which color matches which shape," this symposium will look at the general capabilities embedded with mimesis itself, the appropriation of any media or material. We require a new critical model that can explain the richness of such examples of synæsthesia as Rabelais' famous anecdote recounting the predicament of sailors in the arctic had to "cook up their words" to hear them, because they froze as soon as they were spoken; or the beggar who, when required to pay for enjoying the smell of baked break, satisfied the baker with the sound of a dropped coin. There is no debating that "true" synæsthesia is an involuntary result of a neurological condition affecting nearly 1 of every 500, but InterSense sees synæsthesia as an experience rather than a condition. This symposium asks three questions: (1) "How is synæsthetic experience meaningful to synæsthetes and non-synæsthetes as well?" (2) "Are the arts - and architecture in particular - tied fundamentally to the potentiality of crossovers between media and senses?" and (3) "What critical insights can be gleaned from this essentially neurological condition?" In sum, does synæsthesia serve as a "window onto the essence of art"? Some "cultural" systems seem to involve synæsthetic relations, such as colors relating to seasons, humoristic substances, personality types, etc. This suggests that parallelism, though not truly synæsthetic in the clinical sense, is a part of this mimetic ability. Elaborate artistic projects, such as James Joyce's Ulysses - where each chapter was assigned a set of sensual qualities, show that synæsthesia can be "cultivated" consciously and artistically. Marco Frascari has argued that the architect Carlo Scarpa did just this by using multiple colors to indicate qualities in drawings. If synæsthesia were uniquely neuropathological, its "results" would not be in any way understandable or intriguing to non-synæsthetes. Yet, clearly, the art of known synæsthetes is esthetically engaging and critically provocative. Perhaps synæsthesia is a part of a larger "sense of order" connecting humans to their worlds, imagined and real. The journal aims to open up critical discourse by comparing examples of "true" neurological synæsthesia with "cultivated" and conscious applications. In the case of architectural drawings, in particular, synæsthesia plays a critical and even ideological role. editorial board editors Donald Kunze Marco Frascari Ko'an Jeffry Baysa James Martin David Lovekin Paul Emmons area editors Mark Ballora (music) Omar Khan (media) Hadas Steiner (architecture history) Alberto Pérez-Gómez (phenomenology) Ermyn King (health practices and access) Robert Yarber (arts) Torben Berns (architecture education) Robin Becker (poetry) and more . . .