To the traditional geisha, scents were a tool of her trade. During this causal intervention in the lobby, a geisha will entertain your sense of smell, using a variety of such tools and skills. But she is also a member of the Camera Japan audience, so you may well spot her watching a movie, having a drink or making chit-chat. Who knows, if you stick around, she may surprise you too!
I used: ylang ylang for the flowers on hair, agarwood for veil, rose for fur fan, sandalwood for the other wooden fan, ylang ylang for blue paper flowers I folded for kids, and amber for myself.
Collaboration with inframance, inc. Five different textures of tonic and milk offer the users sensitivities for skin and touch.
perfume _ tilde_
An olfactory artist Maki Ueda developed for the fragrance of [tilde_] with the image of “skin tone”. It is not too sweet, somewhat dear, and transparent. In the old Japanese language, there was no clear division in expressions for the color and the smell. For example the word “niou (fragrant)” meant not only smelling nice, but also meant that the color of “beni” looks vibrant. (The color is in between red, pink and orange). There is a perfect example in the oldest poem book “Manyoshu” edited more than 1000 years ago. The poem is about the beauty of a woman who is standing under a peach tree. The pink color of the blossoms is reflected on the chin of the woman. He says that the skin color of her chin is “niou (fragrant)”. Such unique Japanese sensitivity, somewhat synesthetic, became the starting point for the “skin tone scent”.
DATE: June 4 to October 21, 2018 VENUE: Japan House Sao Paulo (premier) CURATOR: Felipe RIEBENBOOM SUPPORT: Takasago
[Experience]
This is the 4th version of my Olfactory Labyrinth Series, exploring space, movement and olfaction started in 2013. It is a maze with a metaphor of ohanami.
Ohanami is the Japanese traditional custom of picnic party for enjoying cherry blossoms in early spring. “Find the best spot for ohanami, with the sense of smell”, is the assignment to the audience. As you get closer to the invisible sakura (cherry blossoms) trees, it smells stronger.
[Technical Production]
There are 81 bottles hanging from the ceiling in the grid of 9×9. Each bottle contains fragrant oil. The candle rope by which it hangs from the ceiling gradually absorbs the oil and spreads the scent around the space. The oil is just strong enough to be smelled from 35 cm distance. Each grid is thus 70 cm, just wide enough for a person to walk through while smelling. In order to make it possible, the solvent is carefully calibrated as follows: ethanol 80% (emitting property) / propylene glycol 20% (fixative property) .
This version is inspired by The Weber-Fechner Law on psychophysics: the logarithmic relation between the actual change in a physical stimulus and the perceived change. The concentration increases in 3 steps in multiple of 33, as a result of many experimentations: (1) 10.00% (2) 0.33% (3) 0.01% (4) 0.00%
The fragrance sakura is composed by myself as well. I tried to resemble it to the blossoms in the night, which emits very soft and powdery scent in silence.
The last step of the development is composition of colors. The higher concentration has darker color, so there needs color adjustment by each concentration, in order to mask the concentration visually.
