SORT 2022
Dark Perfume WITH INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 2017
Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris
SORT Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris 2022. Parkin Drawing Prize Finalist
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Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris 2022
When the glass dipstick is drawn from the test tube to sample the mixed fragrance of ionones, the circuit senses the presence of a person and begins to emit an earthy musk fragrance.
Due to genetic differences in odour perception there may be various perceptions of both ionones and musk which can present as fugitive, changing and anosmic, suggesting that we may not all be perceiving the same reality.
However the circuit drawn with brass wires connecting the various components can only unambiguously perform the logic mapped as microscopic patterns in silicon. It is reliable and certain unlike biological beings.
Dark Perfume with INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris 2017
Exhibited: “Combine The Package You Can Use And Read It In More Versions", Curated by James Hope @ Laurel Project Space
The work refers to collective memory and computational memory, and the tension between forgetting and remembering, inspired by the line “our memories mislaid by the rain” in Ishiguro’s Buried Giant.
The electronic circuit is laid out to represent its schematic diagram within which are two integrated circuits. It holds both a fragrance and a background odour.
When the work is approached to sample the perfume the electronic circuitry emits a second earthy fecal animal odour. The work refers to collective memory and computational memory, and the tension between forgetting and remembering, inspired by the line “our memories mislaid by the rain” in Ishiguro’s Buried Giant.
The audience are invited to sample the perfume with the glass dipstick. A sensor detects one’s proximity and the electronic circuitry emits a background odour. which is built around the smells that envelop us; earthy, weedy, smoky, they are that of a system that engineered our landscape and thus our mindscape into a grid system of fields and front yards beginning in the mid 1800’s in New Zealand.
The botanical perfume, sealed in a flask for a future time, recalls a tenebrous memory of the fragrance of mushroom picking at dawn, flowers growing in ditches, and the smell of the milkman’s horses. Its set within the interactive electronic circuit laid out to represent its schematic diagram within which are two integrated circuits. The invention of the integrated circuit allowed intelligence to be added to everyday items. Integrated circuits can make decisions and synthesise memory.
Fragrance: Frankincense, costus, cocoa, civet, lapsang souchong tincture, wild porcini mushroom tincture, heliotrope, pink champaca, black pepper
Background Odour: Seaweed, vetiver, geosmin, cepes, birch tar, kauri gum, methyl hexyl ketone, hexanol, church incense smoke, guaicol, costus
Dark Perfume with INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 2017. Combine The Package You Can Use And Read It In More Versions", Laurel Project Space, Curated by James Hope