Armchair Travel (original) (raw)

Abstract

I am fascinated with smell, and with the links we individually form between smell and place. To me, smells, aromas, odours, scents perform similar functions to maps – they enable us to travel without leaving the armchair, both in advance and after the journey. “Properly used a map reconstructs a scene, it becomes a point of departure for the imagination.” (Outhwaite 1935) Our world is a continuous one of relations and processes, but individual experience of the corporeal world is significantly different. Smellscapes are “non-continuous, fragmentary in space and episodic in time.” (Porteous 1990) Smells form a part of our knowing, and disappear before we can nail them in place. So far my study of smell has highlighted perceptual differences, and in the process of smell mapping, listening to “olifactors” or “bouqeteers” and reading individual smell notes I am building a body of human perception of a shared experience, experience which is then recounted very individually.

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