Re/Sense

Our exhibition grew out of a notion that, like the bandwidths of light and sound that are beyond unaided human perception, many olfactory signals presented to our senses remain mainly beyond comprehension. Both FLAP and Re-Sense are explorations of the olfactory sense and its place in our landscapes and in our everyday lives.

Our collaboration began in New Plymouth at SCANZ 2005 where we discovered a mutual interest in integrating cross-sensory experience into artwork. Our initial inquiry centred around whether we could consider the landscape as a map of smell and sound?

We began with Raewyn’s research into the colour green. Green was a project about the feelings contained under our skins, analogous to the subterranean layers of the earth’s green cloak. Raewyn collected photographs of different greens in New Plymouth: plants, ground and objects. These images were then transformed into a computerized colour palette, and then into video. Diana utilized a sensor that is sensitive to variations in the tone and intensity within the colour palette to create a responsive frequency generator. She attached her circuit sensor to the computer screen while it displayed the video thereby creating sounds corresponding to the differing greens. The result is an audio/visual sketch of the colour green.

In 2009, we met together again this time in Banff as part of Diana’s Fleck Fellowship. http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/news/archive/2009/fleck-fellow.asp

We again photographed greens in the environment –this time in Banff National Park and inner city Vancouver. We used this material to make a second video of Canadian greens with the idea of projecting both videos on opposite walls, each with its own sensor and audio frequency generator.

Both animated pallets were then shown to the commercial perfumer, Louise Crouch. Louise uses a sophisticated system of number-letter combinations to support her memory of 200-300 perfumery materials. Louise provided us with fragrances which synaesthetically matched the two visual green sequences. The resulting work is Re-Sense.