Downwind #1

Downwind : Raewyn Turner and Brian Harris. 2012 We developed Downwind for exhibition with two pods and one sugar dispenser. The installation is a development of the POD device which we made in 2011 and which I tested at Monell. The POD is intended for the expression and dispersal of smell. Each pod is a device that when its actuated delivers a small amount of olfactory molecules on a gentle stream of air at a certain ratio, without leaving a residual smell.

Downwind2

Downwind is about training ourselves to read the cyphers of change carried by offshore winds. The smell compounds that the pods exhale are ones known to elicit specific anosmias ( loss of sense of smell) for some, and not for others. It is becoming clear that we are not all perceiving the same smells, nor the same reality.

Backdrop painting: Stockholm tar and plastic

We made a sugar-dispensing device. A little sugar on your tongue may possibly help amplify your sense of smell. When you place your hand on the dish it activates the silver wrecking ball spins in the sugar cone which drops a few sugar grains into your hand.

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Thanks to Richard Newcomb, Plant and Food Research, Monell Chemical Senses Center, USA.