– Deconstructing Chanel No. 5 –
DATE: 15.03.2012 [preimer]
VENUE: V2_ Institute for Unstable Media
CONTEXT: event name: Smell This!
V2’s page on the event Smell This!
OLFACTO (= olfactory) SCAPE (= scenery)
OLFACTOSCAPE is an invisible panorama painting. It’s a 3m diameter space created with a curtain. The walls are “painted” with smells.
Perfume is a composition of multiple ingredients, often more than a hundred. Making a perfume is like making a piece of music: creating a harmony with multiple tones. In this version of the OLFACTOSCAPE, independent components (aromatic ingredients) of Chanel No. 5 are separately placed (sprayed) at the different locations. If you stand in the middle point of the space, you would smell the “harmony.” If you walk along the curtain, you would smell the “individual tones.” The intention is thus, to deconstruct the Chanel No. 5, and to reconstruct it again.
Enter the space, close your eyes, walk and sniff like a dog. Some scents come closer to you, while others fade away. When do you smell the “harmony” and when do you smell the “individual tones?” Do the scents navigate you instead of you navigating yourself? Is there any scent that attracts you, or that makes you want to approach?
This project is supported by Omega Ingredients and inframince.jp.
A multi-sensorial perception of space – ‘Olfactoscape’ by Maki Ueda
A review by Caro Verbeek, an art historian
(cited from http://www.olfactoryart.net/index.php/olfactory-news/14-olfactory-news/109)
‘Because we have two nostrils and because we can move, we are able to perceive smells in stereo and navigate through a space by inhaling’
