THE sight of an owl, the tastes of London Underground stations and the secret sounds of Bradford’s Mirror Pool are just some of the weird and wonderful ‘supersenses’ people can experience at a new exhibition this summer.

Free family exhibition Supersenses will open at the National Science and Media Museum on Saturday, July 15.

Senior exhibitions manager John O’Shea said: “With Supersenses we have created a series of really immersive, unusual experiences in our galleries, that cannot be encountered anywhere else.

“We want visitors to leave this exhibition with a better understanding of how we each ‘sense’ the world differently, and be encouraged to continue to test out their senses after they leave the museum.”

Visitors will be able to experience the world through an animal’s eyes, thanks to an immersive virtual reality experience combining 3D technology with a 6ft tall, 180-degree screen.

The animated simulation, called In the Eyes of the Animal, takes viewers on a journey through a forest, showing the world through the eyes of a dragonfly, a frog and an owl.

It was produced by the creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast using 3D scanning technology and 360-degree cameras.

People will also be able to play in three Sensory Soundpits, moving sand around to create a mix of visual and sound experiences.

Artist Di Mainstone, who has received funding from Arts Council England to develop the piece for the Supersenses exhibition, worked with a team including musicians Mandy Wigby and Howie Jacobs and Bradford-based programmers and games designers Kriss and Shi Blank.

The exhibit is inspired by synesthesia - a phenomenon experienced by around one in 2,000 people in which stimulation of one sense triggers an experience in another, such as ‘hearing colour’.

This phenomenon is also explored in another exhibit, Tastes of London - in which synesthete James Wannerton charts how each station on the underground network tastes for him. For example, he tastes rich fruit cake when he sees the name King’s Cross.

The exhibition moves closer to home with Journey Through the Mirror Pool.

World-renowned television sound recordist Chris Watson, whose work has featured on shows such as Frozen Planet and Springwatch, has been capturing the noises of Bradford’s City Park.

He teamed up with Manchester-based sound artists Noise Orchestra, lecturer Alan Dunn and students from Leeds Beckett University and the University of Bradford to record the ‘unheard’ sounds of its Mirror Pool fountain.

They have turned these into an eight-minute composition that reveals very different aspects of this familiar attraction.

And in addition to all the exhibits, the museum’s learning team will be in the gallery performing sense tests to find which visitors are ‘super sensers’ and investigating if sound affects the taste of chocolate.

For the under-sevens, there is a trail featuring interactive activities and surprising facts about animals’ senses, such as the catfish which has tastebuds on the outside of its body.