The Misophonic Experience

A poster that’s also a one-page graphic story

People chewing (sometimes dogs, too), teaspoons tinkling in cups, mobile phone conversations, air-conditioners humming, sloppy kissing, dogs barking, tuneless whistling, wall-clocks ticking and ticking and ticking – just some of the sounds that drive a person with misophonia to distraction. It’s a condition that impacts more than 10% of the population where certain sounds trigger an intense emotional and physical reaction – anything from irritation to panic to rage. The misophonia sufferer’s extreme response can seem irrational, but to them, to us, the world is a place that must be navigated to avoid certain sounds.

The Misophonic Experience depicts that all-encompassing hypersensitivity to everyday sounds. How do you put the entire world of an experience onto a single map? Starting with ancient cartography and a close look at various mappa mundi, maps that showed what was considered the known world at the time, I set out to make The Misophonic Experience a visual representation of a pervasive auditory experience. Triggering sounds are everywhere – on the bus, in the cinema, walking down the street, in a café, at home – and although the anguish is often unseen, the sounds and situations lurking in the misophonia sufferer’s life are sharply visual. The Misophonic Experience map shows what that world looks like.

The separate panels and text on the right side of the map illustrate how we find relief from those sounds: through physical activities, through being in nature, antidotes to the sense of entrapment misophonia can induce, and through seeking out sounds that are pleasing to the ear.

Art has always made the unseen visible, been a way to externalise what overwhelms, terrifies, and exhilarates. For me, creativity is a way to represent the emotional and physical subtleties and extremes of living with chronic invisible conditions, and through The Misophonic Experience map to recreate a multi-sensory, immersive experience that mirrors a feeling of no escape from triggering sounds.

• Edition of 250
• Dimensions: 70cm x 100cm (27.5″ x 39″)

A little process gif to show the creation of The Misophonic Experience map from pencil sketch, through to inking, digitisation and adding colouring.