“The workshop which I attended was the smell workshop. We first had a short talk, during which we discussed how smells could be perceived, described, and visualised. For example, if a smell was a shape, what shape would it be? Would this change depending on the intensity of the smell? We were encouraged to think on this and to borrow words from other senses to describe smells. E.g. bright, dark, hazy, soft, hard, etc. We also discussed how smells can come with an emotional attachment, as they remind us of words, images, feelings or memories. We were also encouraged to question whether or not a smell is passing through temporarily or permanent?After this initial briefing, we were to get into pairs, and were then assigned a portion of the city in the form of a map (shown above) which we would venture out to, and record everything we could smell as we walked this route. We were given 10 note cards to record these smells on. We had to note if the smell was strong or weak, to describe the smell in words (for example, smells can waft, distract, hint, permeate, suggest, confuse, etc.) and also in actions (baking, frying, digging, sweating, burning, rotting).We found that a lot of the common smells such as food smells coming from various cafe’s and food outlets connoted warmth and positive emotions, so we would describe them as rounded, or soft, happy or thick. Whereas less pleasant smells such as petrol were sharp and violent, and tended to last longer. Passing smells such as the mint from a pedestrian’s chewing gum provided a burst of freshness, short lived yet welcome. Other temporary smells such as a draft of cigarette smoke left a sour and dirty path in their wake. We found that various smells could really effect the atmosphere as they altered your mood and often provoked an emotional response of some kind.Once we had returned back to the Shed, we were asked to recreate our map but instead of mapping the locations on the map, we were to map the smells. We were provided with a large range of materials to use however we wanted, and were led to utilise what we had earlier discussed about what shape a smell would take, and in a 3D map would the smell be high or low? Small or large? We also assigned colours to each smell, as to really give it a mood - it’s own personality.”
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