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SIGNALS OF FRAGRANCE:
PERCEPTION,MENMORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
London is home to a large number of international students from around the world whose olfactory experiences are often closely intertwined with their impressions of the city and their memories of life.
This project will explore how people perceive and express London life on an olfactory level, taking the example of Chinese students who are perfume lovers.
Through their daily use of perfume or fragrance, this group of people constructs a unique olfactory pathway to perceive, experience, and interpret London, where fragrance acts as a symbolic vector, a language, a memory anchor, and an imaginative tension.
About this project
The researcher will use the website to present an odour map of London impressions and personal odour archives of the participants. As senses that are difficult to mediate and communicate directly, the representation of the olfactory experience relies on the synesthesia of the other senses.
With the intervention of digital technology, this project attempts to do so with the aid of visual and textual aids.
The means of mapping directly geographically relates odour memories to important London landmarks in personal histories, with
visual icons,
ethnographic images,
and textual narratives
to restore and visualise individual perceptual scenes and life stories.
At the same time, digital archives are used to catalogue participants' experiences with scent on multiple levels, where the expressiveness of scent generates emotions, thoughts and behaviours regarding their London life.
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