Brief:
This Exploration will look at visually representing our sense of smell. Smells are directly associated with memory and have a unique effect on our brains. Smells or olfactory information may impact on design decisions in more subtle ways than other senses but are no less important. You should make notes, draw icons or record a dictation or video as you wander around the markets as recording the experience is not as straight forward as the other senses. On returning to Parkside you will begin to formulate ways of expressing your experience using visual media in either 2 or 3 dimensions.
exploration 4: Smelscape
To begin this exploration I went on a journey and wondered around the campus recording data of scents where ever I went. I noticed as I was on this journey, that my Covid mask was restricting my sense of smell massively. I was struggling to record any scents at first but after a while I realised that some scents were almost entrapped inside my mask. I thought that this would be a very interesting starting point for my smellcape idea. I then went on to take some notes about the scents that I could smell through my mask and started sketching a plan.
As you can see here I started sketching my smell scape mask idea and began to twist some welding wire into shape and structure of my face. I wanted to create different strands and bits of material to represent different smells which had been entrapped in my mask on my previous venture around campus. I was intrigued by everyone else creating data maps and structures to represent their feelings and memories around these scents because very few people, if any were keeping in mind the olfactory organs (nose, Tongue. Etc) which all of these scents passed through before bringing joy or disgust to our brains. Olfaction is the process of creating the perception of smell. Which the body does when molecules of an odour binds to a receptor within the nose, transmitting a signal to our 'Olfactory system'.
Once I had my strands I started attaching them to my face structure band and colouring, plaiting, bending them and distorting each of them in different intriguing ways to interpret scents like cigarettes, gingery perfume scents in the lift also the wet damp smell of the coming rains. Several different memorable scents on my journey, had an impact on me especially the ones which were so pungent and over powering that I could smell them through my cover mask.
As I started to finish my exploration I decided to do some development drawings on tracing paper of the mask I had made laying them down and outlining each strand to make some really interesting like work. I then overlaid this tracing on the remanence of my markings of the 'strands of scents' I had left behind. Overall I was incredibly pleased with my outcome for this exploration, I loved that mine was different to the rest of the groups because I went for a fashion accessory approach to the brief. Combining our current day situation of being in a global pandemic to the brief of a smellscape, where not since the Spanish influenza have our faces been confined by mask and disease. I created almost a utopian ideal of a mask where breathing was not restricted and smell was liberated .