Impact case study database

Transformed how many MT synaesthetes think about themselves and their relation to others, increasing a sense of belonging, pride and purpose

Like many with non-visible conditions, people with synaesthesia experience prejudice, disbelief, and self-doubt. Ignorance about mirror-touch (only ‘discovered’ in 2005) has contributed to these experiences. One mirror-touch synesthete interviewed by Martin described the reaction he had received from some people to his diagnosis, noting that they think ‘… “this person is lying to me” or “this person must be psychotic”’. (E1) Another wrote of feeling ‘deficient’ growing up (E2). A Psychology Today blogger, herself a synesthete, described neurodiversity as ‘probably the last legal stigma’. (E3) The UK Synaesthesia Association President attests: ‘Daria provided confidence and a voice to mirror-touch synaesthetes who had previously been reluctant to talk about their subjective sensory experiences to other people.’ (E4) The synaesthesia blogger who covered Martin’s Tate Modern symposium for Psychology Today (24^th January 2014; 1,395 views) wrote that Daria’s project ‘…was a major act of public service’. She continued, ‘Mirror-touch synaesthetes globally read my [ Psychology Today] article… and felt validated by it… Daria paved the way for mirror-touch synaesthetes to freely express themselves’. (E3)

Martin interviewed thirteen mirror-touch synaesthetes for the project. Two of them, Carolyn Hart and Joel Salinas, were spurred by the project to become prominent public advocates of mirror-touch . The first of these participants started a blog which has been followed by a forthcoming memoir about her neurodiverse experiences (E2, E5). In collaboration with the popular YouTube channel Great Big Story, she narrated the video, ‘Feeling All the Feels: Living with Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia’, (2017; viewed over 1,800,000 times; 4,400 comments) in which she discusses everyday activities coloured by MTS (E6). She has founded an International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists and Scientists, which hosts symposia that are free and open to the public (E7). This synaesthete writes:

‘When I started talking to Daria, I had only recently learned that my mirror-touch experiences, were anomalous; I was still struggling to articulate my synaesthesia… [This was] my first opportunity to reflect upon my mirror-touch experiences; it gave them context. I felt, for the first time, that I didn’t have to be afraid of my sensorium. Daria’s project was a profound, empowering opportunity that launched me onto a trajectory of advocacy for synaesthesia as a neurocognitive difference. If we don’t bring the voices of neurodiversity out into the world, we’re doing a disservice to humanity’. (E2)

The second of these two project participants is a young NYU neurologist whose participation in the project prompted the writing of his inspirational, best-selling memoir, ‘Mirror Touch: Notes from a doctor who can feel your pain’ (HarperCollins, 2017). Joel Salinas has since become a prominent public advocate of mirror-touch, giving a TED talk (18^th May 2018) and hosting a blog (E6). He celebrates mirror-touch as ‘compulsory mindfulness’ that is ‘essential’ in his work as a neurologist. He writes about the project, ‘Over the course of interviews that I did with Daria, I was invited to think deeply about my experiences and to articulate them in ways I had not before. Prior to speaking at the Tate Symposium, I was scared to “come out” with my experiences publicly. Doing so, on my own terms, was a powerful experience. People reach out to me from all over the world in response to my book and TED talk – from those who have had similar experiences and just want to say “thank you for sharing your story; I finally have a name for this experience”’. (E1)

Created awareness of and positive perception of mirror-touch among ‘neurotypical’ audiences

Martin’s mirror-touch films were exhibited in several prominent public exhibitions, including within the core exhibition space of The Istanbul Biennial (2015), which attracted a record 545,000 visitors (the previous record holder, the 2015 Venice biennial, attracted only 500,875 visitors) (E8). Martin distributed 20,000 free flyers to biennial visitors which described mirror-touch and featured excerpts of the project’s 13 interviews. At the Threshold (R3) was also exhibited outdoors at the public High Line in New York (January 17 – March 23, 2018), which boasts one of the largest attendances of any cultural institution in New York City. In 2018, the year of Martin’s exhibition, the High Line attracted over 7,000,000 visitors. For print and online communications, Martin's program was included in the High Line’s seasonal print calendars (1 x to 25,000); their overall website (2,400,000 visitors in 2016); a dedicated art website (780,000 annual visitors); an e-newsletter (monthly to 45,000); and the High Line’s social media following; Facebook (172,230 followers); Instagram (84,300 followers); and Twitter (82,480 followers) (E9). The president of the UK Synaesthesia Association acknowledges: ‘Daria cleverly made complex ideas and perceptions accessible…[her] films are perfect in explaining mirror-touch synaesthesia - I use them myself to explain the phenomenon.’ (E4)

The Director of the Milton Keynes Gallery, who exhibited Martin’s first mirror-touch film in a solo survey, states: ‘Mirror-touch synaesthetes experience an excess of physical empathy and Daria's work raises awareness of how we respond, interact and empathise with others.’ (E10) The host of the Art Monthly Talk Show on Resonance FM agrees, ‘Daria’s public celebration of the mirror-touch point of view expanded our own; it offered another cognitive paradigm through which the world could be experienced. For me, that’s the promise of neurodiversity’. (E11) The President of the International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists, and Scientists (IASAS), who has been familiar with Martin’s work for many years, noted that ‘One of the reasons Daria’s films have the impact they have is that they do not romanticise Mirror Touch synaesthesia; they do not make it mystical. The films are realistic portrayals of what it is like to live with Mirror Touch and that is why she is so appreciated… I have frequently used and encouraged others to use her work in my own awareness-raising activism and public education’. (E12)

Crucially, Martin began this project only a few years after mirror-touch was identified by neuroscientists (some of whom were advisors to her AHRC Fellowship). The UK Synaesthesia Association President recalls ‘what impressed me was the way her films demonstrated the complex subject of mirror-touch synaesthesia at a time when very little was known about it.’ (E4) The synaesthesia blogger for Psychology Today confirms Daria ‘was visionary in focusing on MTS at the Tate Modern... [she] is a trusted ally of a very sensitive neuro-tribe of people… [Her] intellect and sensitivity allowed her to see [the importance of mirror-touch]. To use a baseball metaphor, she hit it out of the park very, very early with regards to awareness about MTS’. (E3)

Martin’s project has created a ‘ripple effect’ in popular media: mirror-touch has been described on popular TV show ‘Chicago Med’. Martin’s mirror-touch collaborator Joel Salinas, who hosted a TED talk, has also been widely covered in the popular media, raising awareness of mirror-touch through interviews on Fox News, with New York Magazine and The Doctors, an American medical chat show (E6).

Inspired a new aesthetic amongst curators and artists through the empathy inherent in mirror-touch

The project prompted a sensitised relationship to artworks, forwarding a new aesthetics inspired by the empathy inherent in mirror-touch (that widens the notion of the ‘social’ in art). Martin worked with a core group of about 30 curators across the several years during which the project unfolded, including curators at institutions where the work was exhibited (Istanbul Biennial; MK Gallery; Wellcome Collection; VISUAL; Highline), and curators with whom she dialogued for the Tate symposium and OUP edited volume. The Milton Keynes Gallery Director notes of Daria’s work, ‘It reminded us that we don’t have to literally touch something in order to have visceral, physical response to it’. (E10)

Starting with Martin’s artist-collaborators and including artists who have been exposed to the work through exhibitions, the research has established a new aesthetics of embodied spectatorship among art professionals. Writer and host of the Art Monthly Talk Show on Resonance FM: ‘Since engaging with Daria’s films and writing on mirror-touch, I’ve shifted my writing about art. I attempt to access another register. I now try to coax the viewer into an empathic response to my own relationship to artwork’. (E11) Art critic, lecturer and a Programme Director at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin: ‘Daria’s mirror-touch research has been very influential in encouraging artists, curators, and writers to engage in an affective, embodied way with art’. (E13) Performer and co-founder of Theatre O: ‘Daria’s mirror-touch aesthetics help me to access deeper layers of my sensory training as an actor, and to provoke an empathic response in audiences’. (E14) Finally, synaesthetes Salinas and Hart have also gone on to create and exhibit their own art, something which they had not pursued before the project (E15).