Smells Like Roses Olfactory Art

Towards the Mean references the Phillips Curve and the balance between the promise of a wage adjusted to inflation and the power to consume. The twenty three tin cans filled with fragranced soil indicate data points on the graph of the Expectations-Augmented Phillips curve which describes a relationship between inflation and unemployment. 
The Expectation Augmented Philips curve takes into account future inflation expectations. This implies the curve becomes a horizontal line at a certain point, indicated by the mechanism of the work. The flavours in the tins reflect on David Merrit's poem.'Curious diets of the poor, down trodden and the so called mentally ill’   

Large pepsi max and big tins of tuna Listerine and caramello chocolate Free range eggs, oranges and heroin Pork bones and basmati rice Single malt whiskey with ripple cut sour cream potato chips Hastily microwaved steak and cheese pies with bournvita Curiously strong peppermints and 2 minute noodles Over boiled cabbage on extra thick white bread toast Tetrapak  custard, chocolate fish and pineapple lumps Cans of fruit salad and  low alcohol beer Fried white flour and water mix, topped with strawberry jam Roasted mutton flap with low calorie spearmint chewing gum Hydroponic skunk marijuana and budget tinned spaghetti Lime flavoured dairy food and malt biscuits Hot water, soy sauce, sugar and marmite Badly mashed potato mixed with more badly mashed potato Instant macaroni mix and yesterdays left over muffins Stewed cooking apples and edible wax birthday candles.

Downwind combines art, engineering and science research Downwind restages scientific sensory research by taking it into the public domain set out as a field of experience. The smell compounds in each pod are ones known to elicit specific anosmias ( loss of sense of smell) for some, and not for others. The Covid pandemic progressed research into loss of the sense of smell and anosmia and it turns out that its much more complex than not being able to detect certain smells. The research points to genetic variations affecting perceptions of intensity (concentrations) and pleasantness ( whether we like it). Downwind questions whether an understanding of the current atmosphere could be reached by initially finding out individual olfactory capabilities. What can we sense of the sillage downwind of our civilisation?

Waiting Room is a space to reflect on inertia and waiting, punctuated by the ticking of kinetic pendulums and measured by the chaotic motion of the double pendulum clock, infused with expressed evanescent fragrances referring to parosmia and smell distortion due to covid. We are in a climate emergency and a pandemic. How can we afford the time to wait?

'...let us recall that time, as Einstein...explained, is not linear but circular. Our lives are not points on a line – a line which is today being amputated by the Instant Greed of the unprecedented global capitalist order...rather, we are the centers of circles. The circles surround us with testaments addressed to us by our predecessors...and by texts...from nature, from the universe, and they remind us that symmetry co-exists with chaos, that ingenuities outflank fatalities, that what is desired is more reassuring than what is promised...We will learn to wait in solidarity'. John Berger, Confabulations 2016