FLAP
Diana Burgoyne & Raewyn Turner 2010
FLAP features fifty jars with authentic human odours inside (courtesy of socks that have been well worn by New Zealanders and Canadians). With flapping lids, the jars create a variable rhythm while sporadically releasing the scents of New Zealanders and Canadians.
FLAP:DIANA BURGOYNE & RAEWYN TURNER 2010
Following on from our 1st collaborative project ReSense which we developed at BNMI - Banff Centre for the Arts, we created a new work called FLAP.
Our conversation revolved around whether we could create a work using both the synthetic smells of nature and authentic human smell, and whether the smells from our respective countries would differ.
Flap features fifty jars with authentic human odours inside (courtesy of socks that have been well worn by New Zealanders and Canadians). With flapping lids, the jars create a variable rhythm while sporadically releasing the scents of New Zealanders and Canadians. It is what happens next, when those smells and sounds meet the senses of exhibition visitors, which interests Turner and Burgoyne most. In particular, they wonder what automatic associations each of us will experience, and what that will tell us about ourselves as New Zealanders and Canadians. Utilising traditional mechanistic devices which are activated by the audience’s shadow, and recalling the concept of archived human smells held in jars in the Stasi files, FLAP engages with the difficulty of actual preservation of the smell of humans standing on earth in 2013. We don’t yet understand how the olfactory molecule manages to affect the mind but future generations may come to understand the significance of unconscious sensing of human smell signatures and seek ways to preserve their messages.
FLAP explores the intimate landscape of the smells that we take for granted and provides us with a multi-sensory re-visioning of the very humble dirty sock.
With a focus on developing the human as a sensing instrument, FLAP asks if we can monitor humans and the environment as we merge into a collective cyborgian version of ourselves. While the whole of nature is communicating with olfactory signals the realm of olfaction cyphers is largely uncharted despite their effects on human behavior and emotions.
Flap combines Burgoyne’s strengths in performance art and electronics with Raewyn Turner’s research into the as-yet unsensed human plume.
While we were making our first work, ReSense at Banff our conversation revolved around whether we could create a work using authentic human smell. Raewyn took her socks to Plant and Food Research NZ where her smell was extracted from them using HS-SPME-GC-MS analysis.
FLAP explores a more intimate landscape – the landscape of our everyday lives. It asks us to think about the smells that we take for granted in our homes and provides us with a multi-sensory re-visioning of the very humble sock.
FLAP brings two of our individual projects together. It draws on Raewyn’s “PLUME” project, an olfactory investigation, created with Richard Newcomb, a molecular biologist. “Crossing Wires”, the resulting exhibition allowed members of the public to have their socks distilled and encounter science in a new and exciting way. www.crossingwireslab.tumblr.com
Diana’s project, “AUDIO QUILT” was an interactive work reflecting community in a new way using sound and voice. The community’s voices were ‘sewn together in an auditory quilt, allowing them to experience themselves through a different channel, and revealing aspects of their lives and reflecting their community. See more on our blog Culturesoundsmell
Socks for human smell collection
Raewyn's sock analysis. Peaks were found which indicated unknown substances as well as Butylated Hydroxytoluene (an antioxidant!).
Sock analysis Plant and Food Research NZ where the smell was extracted from them using HS-SPME-GC-MS analysis
Documentation of ReSense and FLAP at MiC by Christoph Kirchner
Exhibited at MiC Moving Image Centre Auckland, NZ 2010
We exhibited both FLAP and Re-Sense at MiC, Auckland , NZ in 2010, and later ReSense at the NZ Academy of Arts, Wellington, NZ, 2012.
Both works are explorations of the olfactory sense and its place in our landscapes and in our everyday lives. These works 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.
Sweatshirt
Diana Burgoyne and Raewyn Turner 2010
Sweatshirt is a work in progress which we developed during Diana’s residency at Co-Lab NZ in 2010 when we were developing and preparing both ReSense and FLAP for exhibition at MiC Moving Image Centre, Auckland . We performed the work at AUT Auckland Institute of Technology.
Sweatshirt questions the effect of fine perfumes made for love and happiness on human behaviour, and the cyphers of perfumes created for love since 2001.
We created a veil of fragrance that is emitted via electronic circuitry and that will be sequentially added to over the course of a choregraphed walk through the space.
Each of the perfumes are added sequentially to a specially created fragrance- emitting costume. The dancer/performer becomes a transport for the 35 categorised perfumes.
The whole of nature is communicating, exchanging information with smell and chemical compounds, constituting an ocean of olfactory information. Could we better understand our times if we could navigate the past 8 years by smell?
