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lceylee0826 · 4 years ago

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Shaping smell

Project Description:

This project made a playful visualisation of transient smells into sculptural forms, examining the world through texture and gesture.

Eventually, this project used the outdoor experience space to attracted audience(Who live busy, urban lives, and lack time to observe surroundings), hoping to change public perception of their own city environment by introducing a new perspective of experiencing familiar surroundings through sensory techniques and cross-modal communication.

Process Video Link - https://youtu.be/ul9L09mTmdM (Click it!!!!!)

Inspiration

In once daily design practice, me and my partner searched for an district in Xu hui, Shanghai and made a ‘smell mapping’.

The range and category of different scents can be clearly seen through the map, however, when I interviewed the people who lived or worked there, they told me that it��s hard to feel the smell around them. Besides, when I asked them to rank the senses in order of importance, many people ranked the sense of smell last.

Vision in the main sense that how they feel the city and the world.

This inspired me to think wether if I could heighten the sense of smell, so that could encourage people to feel surroundings in a unique perspective?

But firstly, I do some research about the potential of our smell sense.

Research

A ‘YiXi’ speech’ What should we give up when we give up the smell?’ By Zhou Wen

https://www.yixi.tv/speech#/speech/detail?id=556

Through Zhou Wen’s ’YiXi’ speech’ What should we give up when we give up the smell?’ I found some people often overlooked the sense of smell, but smell does have lots of potential and possibilities. (Find spouse, detect diseases and dangers, etc.)

‘Verbeek the historical significance of smell’ By Caor Verbeek

<https://www.ted.com/talks/caro_verbeek_the_historical_significance_of_smell >

“What if we would combine the latest technology with all this more meaningful historical and art historical uses that we can really start to use smell in a much more meaningful way and even without the technology , we can just start now” “They say an image can say more than a thousand words well , I say a smell can say more than a thousand images.” By Caor Verbeek

Scent can help us feel the things around us in a new way, and can enhance our memories, emotions, and experiences.

‘Bee’s’ By Susana Soares

https://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/20/honey-bees-can-be-trained-to-detect-cancer-in-ten-minutes-says-designer-susana-soares/

This project uses bees to sense the smell molecules of cancer.

‘Smell+’ By Auger Ioizaeu

http://www.auger-loizeau.com/projects/smell

This project explores the human experiential potential of the sense of smell, applying contemporary scientific research in a range of domestic and social contexts.

Then I found some artist research about exploring between humans sense and space, I drew inspiration from thesis case studies.

<while nothing happens> By Ernesto Neto

The designer was trying to use a new way to enhance people's experience. He spread difffferent scents into largescale installations. Each corner of the room emitted difffferent flflavors. The sense of smell could help us perceive a space again.

<Small Room Prototype 4> By Walter Pichler

The designer aimed to solve the problem of personalized life between design, architecture and art. He created a small enclosed space in which vision and hearing are magnifified to the extreme. Could we focus on the sense of smell and let people feel the world through smell?

Based on this, I would like to test if the sense of smell is enhanced, can it allow people to reshape the world in another way?

Experiment1

Conducted two experiments，outdoors and indoors.

Collected some representative flavors which belonged to this street and tested them in a closed space. Hoping to explore whether people could better perceive different odors in a closed space and whether they can reconstruct a space with different odors.

Summary:

In a quiet room, people can draw conclusions through analysis. For example, when you continuously smell flowers, coffee, perfume. Most people think this is a shopping mall or office building, and most people use cool colors to describe these flavors.

When smelling different foods, people tend to think of it as a market or a commercial street. Mostly use warm colors to describe.

Experiment 2

Invited the audience to use the sense of smell to explore a street which was unfamiliar to him. Later he would reconstruct the impression of the street based on his smelling experience.

I found people could use color, shape, even 3D model to reshape surroundings through smell.They also told me that visualize smell can strengthen the feeling of things.

It drived me to consider use the method of cross-modal communication to reshape the familiar things and encourage people to feel them again.

‘The Color of Smell’ By Hannah Weise

https://muep.mau.se/bitstream/handle/2043/21031/TP1_HannahWeiser_June2016.pdf?sequence=2

This artist is also doing research on smell, he invited everyone to come and create a unique scent brush with him, which I was attracted very much.

Because the sense of smell is quiet special, abstract. I hope in this project I could include more samples to determine the shape and color of the installation. In ‘The Color of Smell’ By Hannah Weise, he engaged people to draw sketch in order to visualize the smell. Thus I decided to use the methodology of participatory design in this project.

At the same time, I read a lot of literature about the importance of smell sense.

<Sex Differences in Human Olfaction: A Meta-Analysis> By Piotr Sorokowski ,Maciej Karwowski, Michał Misiak, Michalina Konstancja Marczak, Martyna Dziekan, Thomas Hummel and Agnieszka Sorokowska <Relationships between personality traits and attitudes toward the sense of smell> By Han-Seok Seo , Suji Lee a, Sungeun Cho <Research progress on olfactory function in schizophrenia patients> By ZHANG Huijuan，JIN Jin，LI Chunbo

Summary：

The sense of smell affects human behavior:

Environmental Safety：1 Detection of microbial risks (feces/rot/corruption) 2 Non-microbial risks (gas leakage, etc.) 3 Perceived danger

Personal identity：1 stimulate emotions 2 detect age 3 sexual interest spouse selection 4 retain memory

Personal Safety：1 Detecting diseases (Alzheimer's disease/Parkinsonism/Autism/Severe Depression/Mental disorders, etc.) smell may become a standard for early identification of high-risk groups.

<https://yixi.tv/#/speech/detail?id=556> By Zhou Wen

The human sense of smell is not degraded, and the human sense of smell is very powerful. But our sense of smell reaches its peak when we are in our 20s and 30s, and then gradually declines. MHC (HLA) will affect our judgment on the gender of others, so as to make spouse selection. Research has shown that most couples have a large difference in HLA. So when scientists use androstadienone (male hormone) and estrogen (female hormone) to make people judge gender based on their bias. This also proves that when the visual gender cues become blurred, smell can indeed help us to judge the gender of others. Women's olfactory ability>male. Young people's olfactory ability>old people. Women are easy to judge by smell.

<Olfactory disorders and olfactory function test> By Ni Daofeng

In the 1970s, the National Neural and Communication Disorders and Stroke Advisory Committee estimated that 2 million Americans had taste or smell disorders. According to recent statistics, the National Earth Society and the Monell Chemical Sensation Center reported that 1.2% of the 1.5 million participants had permanent anosmia and 62.4% had temporary anosmia. There are no epidemiological data on olfactory disorders in our country, and there are few related studies. Dysosmia has not received enough attention. Patients often do not mention changes in the sense of smell. Doctors often ignore changes in the sense of smell during medical consultations and even medical record writing.

Through these article research，I have come up with the idea B———Use virtual reality to visualization smell, identify the safety of objects. Then I do some other research，mainly focused on smell visualization.

‘DESIGN OF OLFACTORY INFORMATION VISUALIZATION ——OLFACTORY AR WATCH "OWATCH" ’By Yechen Zhu

‘Bioelectronic nose and its application to smell visualization’ By Hwi Jin Ko,Tai Hyun Park

It is very difficult to visualize smell. There are extremely high requirements for professional knowledge, graphic control, and data collection and research.

‘One and Three Chairs’ By Joseph Kosuth

Joseph used three different forms to define a chair. It led me to think to different forms to expressing the same thing to expand people’s experience.

Combine with Sarah Sze‘s Ted talk ’How we experience time and memeory through art ’https://www.sarahsze.com , I learned that memories, and experience brought by real objects cannot be replaced. which made me want to use a physical way to simulate smell.

Finally, I decided to use those two forms: photography and 'smell visualization' installation.

‘Reverse of volume ACG’ By Yasuaki Onishi 2010

The Japanese artist is good at using multi-media to visualize the invisible in the form of a three-dimensional installation.It’s the same direction as I wanted to try.

‘Water Line’ By Maya Lin.

‘Heo’ By Seung Mo Park https://www.seungmopark.com

They’ve inspired me to use materials (Aluminum wire / Hot melt glue gun) to make installations.

’Pixel Forest’ By Pipilotti Rist

https://necsus-ejms.org/confronting-the-screen-pipilotti-rist-pixel-forest-at-the-new-museum/

In order to enhance people's viewing experience and discuss the relationship between people and the screen, designer created a device to isolate the outside world.I am attracted by this form of creating a small isolated space.

When my installation is hidden in a sheltered environment, it may help people to focus on it and let people experience better. Based on it, I'm going to build dark boxes which can contain my smell installations.

Design concept

I decided to build an outdoor experience space that contains 4 smell visualization installations and 4 photographs through all the research. Let the audience actively visit these ‘Smell Models’ naturally and playfully while they could feel the surroundings differently. Besides, they could pay more attention to our smells sense.

Design process

Based on previous interviews, I focused my audience on those who lives busy and lack time to observe the surroundings. I hope to create special experiences to attract them naturally. I communicated with them on the subject of work, stress, and the city environment.

Many office workers (32) told me that it is difficult for them to have time to observe the city in daily life. Thus I decided to set up my installations near a office building and to pick some object that we are usually familiar with. Combined with daily observations, I finally planned the scope of objects into 4 categories：flowers and plants, living organisms (animals), and artificial composites.

Finally, I found 4 representative objects outdoors nearby some offices.(flower, grass, stray cat, half bottle of water)

’What a smell looks like’ By University of Colorado Boulder studies the fIuid mechanics of fragrancesa lab

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/what-a-smell-looks-like

This team’s study showed that the smell looks like 3D figure and will continue to diffuse. From seen this, I will use those shapes to make the installation.

Participatory design

According to previous interviews, I found 4 representative objects from a platform of an office building. (Grass, flowers, stray cat and a half of water bottle). I invited people who work around there to observe and try to draw the smell’s shape and color.

I found that there are some similarities from the sketches. The output will based on these and the artist reference.

Material test & Prototype & Feedback

According to research, I first tested different materials and made a prototype.Then I found that the aluminum can be affected by light and perspective in the dark, thus producing a fIowing effect.

Then I tested the effect of dark box. Besides, I use lights of different colors to change the color of the aluminum wire.

Feedback

1: The dark box should be more prominent, black can easily invisible at night.

2: The dark box needs to be more ergonomic. It can be made deeper, which is convenient for viewing; a special pipe can be added, and the viewing angle can be easily changed without exposing the device; make pillars to support the dark box, because the viewing posture is not very comfortable.

Then I tested which material is better to remain attractive in the dark. In the end I decided to use silver tin foil.It can be recognized in the dark. And silver is more neutral and mysterious.

Also，I adjust the dark boxes.

Final effect of installation

According to research early, I found these 4 representative things outdoor. Then took the photos of them and finally made these special ‘smell installations’.

Half a bottle of water 56cm*28cm

A small grass 54cm*28cm

A stray cat 56cm*30cm

Small flower 36cm*40cm

Sketch

Details

Experience space

My experience space is build on the platform of an office building, where many office workers will be attracted naturally. And I prepared a manual to introduce the concept of this project. But I did not deliberately show it to others, I put it next to the boxes.

Feedback and reflection：

1: The length and material of the pipe need to be tested again. I will measure more samples for data analysis later.

2: The lighting could be more dim, I think dynamic projecter can be added in the future. Installation can also be made more dynamic,(Fans, smoke, etc.) Better materials can be found in future.

3: How these installations can constantly stay? I will consider to use interactive website and digital 3D model (interactive website/3D model) to have a better connect with audience.

4: From the environmental point of view combined with the broken window theory, although this is a temporary outdoor exhibition, is there a better location and props to choose? And how to collect user feedback more naturally rather than through interviews.

Bibliography：

1: ‘Research progress on olfactory function in schizophrenia patients‘ By Zhang Huijuan, JIN Jin, LI Chunbo.

2: ‘Bioelectronic nose and its application to smell visualization‘ By Hwi Jin Ko, Tai Hyun Park.

3: ‘Smelling Shapes: Crossmodal Correspondences Between Odors and Shapes‘ By Grant Hanson-Vaux, Anne-Sylvie Crisinel, Charles Spence.

4: ‘The Color of Smell A cross-modal interactive installation for individual expression‘ By Hannah Weiser.

5: ‘https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization‘ By David McCandless.

6: ‘https://www.ediblegeography.com/smell-designing-sheffield/’ By Victoria Henshaw.

7: ‘Design with smel:Practices, Techniques and ChallengesEdited‘ By Victoria Henshaw, Kate McLean, Dominic Medway, Chris Perkins and Gary Warnaby.

Thank you for watching

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