Violet Works
A series of works and experiments exploring intuitive responses to lack of light, anosmia and smell that switches off and on.
INSTALLATION : Don’t Look the sky is violet 2020
Exploring sound, darkness and anosmia
Harold Neel, anosmic from birth, talks about his experience alongside Millane Rayner talking about what he remembers before he was born. Violet fragrance is known to appear and disappear. The ionone in violets binds to the olfactory receptors and then it can’t be sensed for a few moments, then it registers again. It switches off and on. Some people are anosmic to beta ionone (the smell of violets) and other compounds at certain concentrations.
MP3 Audio Surround Sound: Created with assistance from Miranda Donovan, Jana Whitta and MAINZ. Voices Millane Rayner and Harold Neel.
Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris Scent emitting device—pencil in test tube dispersing the fragrance of beta-ionone.
Video : Move Violet Raewyn Turner 2013
Move Violet explores intersensory experience and differences in perception.
Harold Neel, anosmic from birth, talks about his experience alongside Millane Rayner talking about what he remembers before he was born. The video is designed to be experienced with the smell of Beta Ionone (violets). Fragrance emitting devices are placed near the screening of the video. The devices are low-tech and electronic and slowly release the aroma.
Producer, concept design, camera, sound recording, editing : Raewyn Turner
Soundscape : Raewyn Turner with assistance from Miranda Donovan, Jana Whitta and MAINZ.
Voices: Millane Rayner and Harold Neel.
Hands: Yukiko Tomizawa
MP3 Audio Surround Sound: Created with assistance from Miranda Donovan, Jana Whitta and MAINZ. Voices Millane Rayner and Harold Neel.
Installation The space is very dark. The work is composed of mobile elements of sound, smell, and touch around the audience . The installation combines a 3D soundscape with a sequence of 20 smells which are brought to the audience by performers. Each person is led through a dark fragranced portal/passageway into a room in complete darkness, onto a textured pathway which they feel underfoot and which will be their only guide through the installation. They begin their journey at a fork in the path. Smells are wafted around them by two performers who press various fragranced soft cotton swabs into their hands and replace them with others. The performers move around each person in a choreography of wind, smell and touch.
The smells are evocative and contemporary. The perfumes are creations by Commercial Perfumer Louise Crouch.
The selection of the odours refers to the experience of the collective odours of the skins of ten older caucasian women during my artist residency at Monell Chemical Senses Centre, 2011. Dr Preti prepared a GCOOlfactory Gas Chromatograph session so that I could use my nose to detect human skin vapours emitted from a column—specifically skin extracts fromten older Caucasian women, and qualify my experience of them by verbal perceptual descriptions.
Jane Nimsoongnem models the perfume stick apron
Don't Look The Sky is Violet was hosted by Corban Estate Art Centre during the Interact Disability festival 2012.
Thanks to : Eugene Rayner, Marie Smith, Helen Prichard, Jeremy McCrae, Melissa Jordan, Jane Nimsoongnem
Violet Raewyn Turner 2012
This was my first experiment in emotional sensory correspondences and refers to the anosmic fragrance of violet, once a deeply political and emotional flower/fragrance during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.
Yukiko who appears in the film couldn't smell violets. Some people are anosmic to the smell of violets (beta ionone) and other compounds at certain concentrations.
Voices Millane Rayner and Harold Neel. Hands: Yukiko Tomizawa Thanks to Don Milne, Brian Harris
Don't Look The Sky is Violet : Installation Raewyn Turner 2012
Two voices are heard—fragments of a stories by a person who has been anosmic since birth and a child who remembers before he was born. The 3D soundscape moves around the space; two voicesare heard—fragments of a stories by a person who can’t smell and a child who can’t see. Along the way cars whiz by, a dog barks in the distance, aeroplanes take off, a train goes by, a breeze comes in through an open window. The sounds move around the audience.
