Research took the form of an open question snowballed to friends and colleagues of the Sensing Spaces team members and the designer. The smell descriptions were simplified from the original longer descriptions and collected into similar spaces. Smell shapes are an artistic interpretation of the descriptor.

The nose is the most sensitive device for collecting olfactory data. Following 6 olfactory walks in July 2018 coordinated by MAIF Social Club, 72 volunteers collected 937 “smell notes” such as “aftermath of the party”, “tranquility in the city”, “carnations and tomatoes”, “hot tire / asphalt in the sun ”and“ cement and works ”. The most mentioned odours relate to food (119), nature (110), and perfumes (45) and there is almost perfect equality between the smells loved (43%) and those not appreciated (41%).

En français

Le paysage odorant du Marais comprend une série d’odeurs épisodiques et localisée qui se répètent dans différentes rues; Les galeries dégagent des odeurs d’encre, de vernis et de peinture; la fraicheur du bambou et du jasmin plantés soulage la chaleur les énormes portes en bois qui absorbent et reflètent le soleil d’été. Sur les étales, les pêches et autres fruits mûrissent, et dans les boutiques de ceintures et de chaussures, on trouve des parfums de cuir. Pardessous toutes les autres odeurs se trouves deux humidités distinctes: l’une a pris son envol des fontaines et l’autre s’échappe des caves des bâtiments de pierre médiévaux.

Le nez est le dispositif de collecte de données olfactives le plus sensible. Grâce à 6 promenades olfactives en juillet 2018 organisées par le MAIF Social Club, 72 bénévoles ont collectionné 937 “notes d’odeur” telles que “lendemain de fête”, “tranquilité dans la ville”, “oeillets et tomates”, “pneu chaud / asphalte au soleil” et “ciment et travaux”. En conclusion les plus mentionnées relèvent de la nourriture (119), de la nature (110), et des parfums (45) et l’égalité est presque parfaite entre les odeurs aimées (43%) et celles non appréciées (41%).

However, the “sensory turn” of the 90s and 2000s saw smell evolve into a subject for study and witnessed its inclusion in many design-related practices. My own design-focus considers not only the source of the smell, but also the effects of heat, wind patterns and moisture on odours before they are ingested in a sniff into the human nose. This firmly places smell as an environmental encounter.

Notable whiffs included “Gym people”, “pretentious coffee roast” and “food trucks – Halal and Chinese” as well as a “Wet, dusty dog”, “Phone booth” and “wet garbage bins”. The subway is a regular contender on the NYC smellscape radar – a smell propelled by warmth and air pushed through tunnels as noted in the following smellnote, “Stronger when the train passes under the sidewalk”. During the smellwalks one participant elected to differentiate the smells from four different bins and discovered them each to be quite unique putting pay to the myth that all garbage can be labelled reductively. Another sniffed passersby unbeknownst to them and recorded human smellscapes on New York’s streets.

MARSEILLE SMELLMAP BY SECTOR:

1 o’clock : explored the movement of smell discovering and depicting its unruly qualities in their narrative mapping of a smellwalk. Their mapping reveals the intensity of the diesel fumes along the main streets over the transparent layerings of other city smells (including ‘warmth’, ‘dust’ and ‘mint tea’) seeking to escape the confines of any artificial boundaries

2 o’clock : created a conic datascape based on the length, intensity and location of detected smells revealing a increasing intensity and length further from Marché de Noailles – less olfactory rivalry? Tracing paper was placed between the harsh edges of the panoptic street plan to represent the blurred edges of the space where smells intermingle

3 o’clock : identified 4 levels of olfactory existence in the city; underground, street level, human level and airborne. They used this structure and the concept of ‘pre-visible’ smells to generate a data sculpture of smell zones that they all perceived using colour value to indicate length of the smell (high value = short, low value = long)

4 o’clock : investigated the materiality of smell sources inclusive of the subject space being investigated. They asked local market stall holders and shopkeepers to identify exemplar odours and worked with the donated smell sources to generate a cross-modal, experiential mapping, transcribing smell into tactile form. The mapping reveals vast areas of smell voids and also where smell ‘textures’ overlap

5 o’clock : developed their own variation on the methodology of smellwalking by taking it in turns to temporarily lose their senses of sight and hearing, identifying the smells through a single input channel. They used this concept of hide/reveal through an ephemeral interactive mapping

6 o’clock : highlighted the lightness of smell and envisaged how they might overlap through a delicate, fragile datascape. A tightly controlled mesh of smell intersections place the human within the space and use height as an indication of smell intensity. The reverse side of the map is less structured and possibly more poetic as a result

7 o’clock : read the smellscape as a collection of 5 interconnecting olfactory trajectories with varying degrees of intensity. They represented this with thread dyed and painted to create the variegated sensation. Another instance of multiple angles; as a viewer you can take the panoptic approach or imagine yourself tangled inside this web of airborne trails. Humour punctuates adding a narrative component with verbatim ‘conversations’ unfurling at points on the map

8 o’clock : exposed general olfactory zones in their sector detecting ‘work and fried food’, ‘dust and washing-up liquid’, ’sewers and harbour water’. Their mapping response was to return the question of olfacto-visual connection back to the user by asking them to imagine the olfactory perception in a quadrant as an inked texture and to place it on the map. What patterns will emerge?

9 o’clock : played off the land/sea binary and built a busy highway of smell pennants along the harbourside. Broad smell categories used were: restaurants and bars, tourism, humans, vegetation and the maritime. The pennants, designed to blow in Marseille’s winds diminish in colour intensity the further from the source they flee

10 o’clock : created an olfactory ‘in-between’ space where smells hover in cloud formation above your head and also appear as puddles of diffuse colour on the ground. Uncertainty about the connection and its subsequent tension is a particular feature of this approach. Do the smells drop form above or rise from below?

11 o’clock : reframed the experience of smell perception as light and shadow using cartographic, navigational conventions. The user is presented with unarticulated forms of buildings where smells were detected. On each building a coded form of grid reference indicates a way into a transduced smell experience

12 o’clock : translated their smell perceptions into a mass of floating forms. This abstracted datascape has a surface of its own, a body and materiality; tarnished and dirtied, translucent and opaque. Without any reference to the grid of the city this smellscape is deliberately and provocatively ungrounded