– a bar for sniffing –
site specific research / installation (2010)
Electric-Eclectics Festival, Meaford, Canada on 01-03.08.2008.
[content]
Maki Ueda will research and find interesting local scents, and extract them on-site. The goal is to find the local and original scents; the scent of daily life, food, drinks, materials, persons, and environment. Because of the evaporating character of the smell molecules, scents cannot be
preserved very long, and therefore it’s preferable to work local. Maki Ueda has been making a series of the perfume works under the name “Aromatic Journey” (http://www.ueda.nl/aromatic_journey1). These works focus on the local, extraordinary scents. The local culture is being explored and experienced by means of scent. The results are not a perfume to wear, but to smell and trigger one’s imagination.
[extraction during the festival]
Maki Ueda will extract the scents of the chosen subject in a mini-laboratory installed in a caravan. The visitors can visit the caravan and observe the extraction process, and off course they can smell the scents-in-progress.
The premier of SMELL BAR was presented at the Electric Eclectic Festival 08, Meaford, Canada in August 2008.
SMELL BAR is a bar for sniffing. The bottles on the bar counter are at your disposal. You can sniff them from the bottles or with the perfume strips. It is an installation with which you can smell and experience the local smells.
The each smell is extracted manually from materials found in the environment. Thus they together form the environmental smell as collective.
In the fieldwork the environment is being explored and experienced by means of smell. Then the smells are extracted freshly on-site. It’s because that the preservation of natural smell is almost impossible because of the character of the smell molecules: they are easy to viporate and decay. This work is not site-specific, but the extracts have to be made on-time on-site. The results are not a perfume to wear, but to smell and trigger one’s emotion and imagination.
These smells below were found and extracted for the Meaford version.
- No. 1 White Clover (oil)
- No. 2 Red Clover (oil)
- No. 3 Spruce Leaves (oil)
- No. 4 Pine Leaves (water distillation)
- No. 5 Yew (tincture)
- No. 6 Pine Leaves (tincture)
- No. 7 Grass (tincture)
- No. 8 White Clover (tincture)
- No. 9 Queen Anne’s Lace (tincture)
- No.10 Pink Clover (tincture)
- ….
- No.19 Grass (oil)
- No.20 Spruce Leaves (soxhlet extraction)
fieldwork: researching smells in the environment
The festival was taking place in a farm environment called ‘funny farm’. The map indicates where the smelly materials were collected.
extraction process
The natural energy as sun light and the warm temperature was used for extracting the smells as much as possible.
bar counter & mobile lab
More info:
https://olfactoryart.blogspot.com/search/label/%5BSMELL%20BAR%5D
