2.10.10 | Events, Ideas, News, Projects
HeadSpace: On Scent as Design
| March 26, 2010 | ||
| 6:00 pm |
Why is it that designers rarely utilize the sense of scent in their work? Is there something about it that makes it difficult to work with? Hard to control? Deeply unknowable? Is scent beyond representation and representational thinking? Does it defy our ability to work meaningfully with it?
These are some of the questions that are driving a symposium that will be held at Parsons The New School for Design on March 26, 2010. HeadSpace: On Scent as Design is a collaboration between the Transdisciplinary Design graduate program in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons, MoMA, International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) and the science and culture magazine SEED. It is a follow up to our collaborative event held two years ago entitled Mind08. This year’s event will feature designers, scientists, artists, theorists, and fragrance industry professionals in a all-day, wildly eclectic program. The formulation and articulation of the project has been a collaboration along with Laetitia Wolff from Parsons, Paola Antonelli from MoMA, Veronique Ferval from IFF, Eva Wisten from SEED and the film-maker Jane Nisselson of Virtual Beauty. The overall project includes not only the symposium but a class I am currently teaching entitled Critical Experiments in the Smell of Space and Time in the undergraduate Integrated Design Program at Parsons. We’ll be developing an unexpected scent “experience” for the day of the symposium.
Below you will find an outline of the program, which is not yet fully confirmed, but close:
HEADSPACE: On Scent as Design
Parsons the New School for Design
and the Museum of Modern Art
In partnership with International Fragrances and Flavors (IFF)
present the HEADSPACE symposium
on Friday March 26, 2010
10am-5pm
with [media sponsor] SEED magazine
Symposium concept:
HEADSPACE is a one-day symposium on the conception, impact, and potential applications of scent. This event gathers for the first time leading thinkers, designers, scientists, artists, established perfumers as well as “accidental ones” (a selection of architects, designers, and chefs invited to experiment with scent) to challenge our understanding of this untapped medium, transcending boundaries and exploring new territory for design.
We understand our world through our senses. Our sense of smell, however, is both rarely utilized and hardly engaged by designers. Scent is an untapped medium that presents a remarkable opportunity for design, given that it is in part through scent that we more fully perceive space, fashion our identities, encode our memories, alert ourselves to danger, enliven our appetites, stimulate curiosity, and navigate our lived and natural environments.
Scent is also a form of design in and of itself. It emerges as an exciting realm for design exploration precisely at a time when a dematerialized and ephemeral technology seems to be leading us further away from direct sensory experiences. Modernist architecture and design attempted to banish all odors through new finishes, air control systems, and antiseptic surfaces, and our digital future seems to hold no place for the vicissitudes of aromas, fragrances, and stink. However, exciting new science is exploring the ways in which scent stimulates cognition, memory, and the production of experience.
Symposium format:
The Headspace symposium is not merely a platform to trigger creative exchange amongst experts and explorers, it is also an innovative, immersive and experiential event. Its multiple facets include:
• Panels: four moderated panels of presentations by diverse experts from different disciplines.
• Accidental Perfumers: 5 high profile international guest designers commissioned to rethink our relationship to scent and to re-imagine our experience of scent in collaboration with professional perfumers.
• Film: an introductory documentary film that explains how scent works physiologically and that profiles both specialist and non-specialist designers designing applications with scent.
• Experience: a scent experience designed for the event by scent designers from IFF in collaboration with Parsons students.
Panel program outline:
Panel #1 Designing Scents
What is “knowledge” in terms of scent? How do we learn and probe the world through scent? Is there a language of scent? How do we develop concepts and building blocks for scent as a design capacity?
> Carlos Benaïm: perfumer
> Ayse Birsel: product designer
Moderator: Laetitia Wolff (Parsons)
Panel #2 Space, Time and Scent
How is scent tied to our perceptions of space and time? How are designers using scent to reshape our perception and experience of space, time, interiors, and products? How are designers using scent to brand experiences?
> Toshiko Mori: architect
> Anna Barbara: designer and architectural theorist
> Sissel Tolaas: conceptual scent artist
Moderator: Paola Antonelli (MoMA)
Panel #3 Scent, Sensors and the Expanded Realm of Sensation
What can scent tell us that we do not already perceive or understand? How will electronic sensors reshape our olfactic world? What can we detect through scent but not fully comprehend? How might ubiquitous scent sensors reconfigure the everyday?
> Leslie Vosshall: researcher on how higher olfactory centers process different odor stimuli to yield a conscious percept of a particular smell
> Susana Soares: designer of biological sensing bee technologies
> Dr. William Hanson: medical writer and developer of electronic aroma sensor
Moderator: Adam Bly (SEED)
Panel #4 Anosmia and Modernity
How have we created the absence of scent in our everyday lives? What does it mean to have no scent? What are we not sensing when we cannot smell anything?
> Sylvia Lavin: architecture and design critic
> Jean-Louis Fréchin: designer exploring digital hyper-sensoriality
Moderator: Jamer Hunt (Parsons)
Accidental Perfumers:
A select group of designers will partner with perfumers from IFF to create a series of unique applications for scent in our everyday lives, beyond fragrance. A film will document the designer/perfumer collaborations. In between panels, the presentation of their outcome as well as their process will be moderated by New York Times fragrance critic, Chandler Burr.
Ayse Birsel + Bibi Seck (NYC) – www.birselplusseck
Zöe Coombes and David Boira (NYC) – www.commonwealth.nu
Toshiko Mori (NYC) – www.tmarch.com
Majora Carter (NYC) – www.majoracartergroup.com
Proef (Holland) – www.proefamsterdam.nl
The event will be free and open to the public. However, guests must register in advance to guarantee seating at <www.headspace2010.com>.
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[...] Parsons the New School for Design and the Museum of Modern Art in partnership with International Fragrances and Flavors (IFF) present the HEADSPACE symposium. HEADSPACE is a one-day symposium on the conception, impact, and potential applications of scent. This event gathers for the first time leading thinkers, designers, scientists, artists, established perfumers as well as “accidental ones” (a selection of architects, designers, and chefs invited to experiment with scent) to challenge our understanding of this untapped medium, transcending boundaries and exploring new territory for design. more info… [...]
I’m a board member of the Vera List Center at The New School and would like to enroll for the Headspace event, please.
Koan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Canl St Sta POB 995
New York NY 10013
[...] (full details here). And mark your calendars for March 26, when Parsons and MoMA will present a one-day symposium on “the untapped medium of scent as a new territory for design.” Comments (0) / Add a [...]
I’ve signed up, waiting to receive confirmation, and am very much looking forward to the symposium. You’ve put together an excellent array of speakers, and I can’t wait to experience the Accidental Perfumers’ creations.
[...] series. An interesting symposium is scheduled for March 26 at Parsons The New School for Design. HeadSpace: On Scent as Design will feature designers, scientists, artists, theorists, and fragrance industry professionals in a [...]
I am a sculptor and i made art installation & performance with odors & sound. I’m interesting by HeadSpace symposium.
This sounds absolutely wonderful! I love to incorporate scent into my work. Unfortunately, I am not sure travel to NYC will be possible that week. Are there any plans to broadcast this via the web?
Thank you and best regards.
I understand the need to find new and better ways to communicate messages. However, I suffer from asthma and generally it is triggered by perfumes and other scents. I’m not alone and it is a major health issue for many. Ask any allergist.
Frankly, I’d like to see all perfumes band in public places…just like smoking has been banned.
Thanks for taking the time to read these concerns. I hope that this will be addressed at the symposium.
I’ve been studying the relation between blind people and fashion since 2002. The development of fashion collections can use diferent fragrance, parfums, to help this people to identify the clothes inside a store. This simposium can enlarge the researches in the fashion design area. I live in Brazil and I’m a teacher at a fashion design school and I’d like to know the results of the simposium. Will you publish a book or something about it?
Great idea! Curious. Are their any natural perfumers/users of natural plant essences on the program. Seems like it might be an oversight?
I too would like to enroll. Thanks much,
Julie Anixter
ESI Design
111 5th Ave.
NY NY 10003
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by cfavedesign: Headspace: On Scent as Design at Parsons http://transdesign.parsons.edu/?p=295 Very excited for this symposium!…
Scent in design…
Designers work with just about everything — form, function, physical materials, visual imagery, shapes, sights, and sounds. But almost no designer ever works with smells. Why is that? Are aromas too ethereal? Too hard to control? Too open to……
Should we expect email confirmation after registration?
Where will the symposium take place?
I’m not a board member of the Vera List Center at The New School and would like very much to enroll for the Headspace event through may be a possibility to follow online ? In any case, i would very much like to receive the transcript of the event ! I live in Belgium.
I have been writing a perfume blog for the past three years or so, and am very interested in this topic.
I have frequently posted on the historical and social aspects of perfume culture.
Please confirm my registration at the email address provided. Thank you and I am so glad you are putting on this event!
I am very much interested in attending the symposium, unfortunately I have work. in that case, is it possible to have the symposium available in podcast? or youtube? if so, that will be awesome! unfortunately, scents can’t travel through the net or wires, or can it? least not yet in this time. Well this is fourth down on the five senses in human interaction, but smell can correlate with taste so i guess that’s basically covering all five senses in design. this can be a great step for future of Branding, well maybe not a great step cause it has been done before for signature perfumes, so probably a more prominent mark in creating a brand environment.
Baron
We are videotaping the day and hope to post the video to this site or the headspace2010.com site once we have processed it. You are right, though, the smells won’t make it through. Still working on that!
[...] here for more info on the [...]
[...] HEADSPACE: On Scent as Design [...]
[...] Read more about the symposium on Parsons Transblog [...]
I am a multimedia artist. Lately, I am working on a project where the olfactory sense is the main protagonist. Unfortunately, I am in Brazil at the moment and I missed the symposium. I would like to know if there will be a visual and audio documentation and if so, how can I have it.
I also would like to invite all of you to participate in a blog (http://www.joselycarvalho.net/blog/diaryofsmells), an archive of smells and memories to be included in a sensory sculpture installation to be presented at the end of 2010 at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro
Hello,
I was very interested in the symposium held last Friday but was not able to attend. A friend that did attend mentioned it may have been taped and available online. Can you please let me know if this is happening and if so, how and when I would be able to see it?
Thank you,
Susan
My name is Piter Jankovich. oOnly want to tell, that your blog is really cool
And want to ask you: is this blog your hobby?
P.S. Sorry for my bad english
Hello Jamer,
I am an MFA student at MICA in Photographic and Electronic Media and am involved with a project on scent. Is there any way to have access to, or see information on, the project/experiment your class conducted “Critical Experiments in the Smell of Space and Time.” ?
Unfortunately I missed the symposium(!)
Many thanks,
Sunday
Just wanted to toss in my 2 cents. In the west, the white pine bark beetle is devastating forests on an unprecedented scale (it’s happened in the past but cold winters killed the beetles). Pheromone packets that emit a scent un-smellable by humans, but acting as a potent deterrent to the beetle have been developed to quell the epidemic. Place a packet on a tree and it has an artificial defense. The challenge is how to disseminate the packets in a manner that goes beyond hiring temp workers to hike around the forests. One local artist/videographer/creative type is launching a website and campaign to involve people who go hiking and enjoy the wilderness to participate in placing the scent packets on trees, thus educating about the impact of the beetle, and how it affects the areas they love. This endeavor reminded me about the different aspects of scent and how it plays a varied role in our world.
This looked like a fantastic conference. Is it possible to purchase any of the materials presented, particularly the film?
thanks so much for this post on scent as design. i thoroughly enjoy the blog and look forward to reading more.
I have been writing a perfume blog for the past three years or so, and am very interested in this topic.
I have frequently posted on the historical and social aspects of perfume culture.
Please confirm my registration at the email address provided. Thank you and I am so glad you are putting on this event!
I’ve been studying the relation between blind people and fashion since 2002. The development of fashion collections can use diferent fragrance, parfums, to help this people to identify the clothes inside a store. This simposium can enlarge the researches in the fashion design area. I live in Brazil and I’m a teacher at a fashion design school and I’d like to know the results of the simposium. Will you publish a book or something about it?
Studying a scent could really be hard thing to do but when you have the passion to learn what fragrance and scent is all about you will love it.
I’ve been thinking about scent and design for quite some time: I’m legally blind (due to an accident) and therefore get to hang out with people who are blind aka “visually impaired.”
Scent, like sound, or touch, is a way a person can learn to identify and/or navigate space and/or place.
I’ve been studying the relation between blind people and fashion since 2002. The development of fashion collections can use diferent fragrance, parfums, to help this people to identify the clothes inside a store. This simposium can enlarge the researches in the fashion design area. I live in Brazil and I’m a teacher at a fashion design school and I’d like to know the results of the simposium. Will you publish a book or something about it?