Moving Still
2015-2016
B.Des Thesis Project
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“a special joy of travel is to acquaint oneself with the geography and microcosm of smells and tastes.”
- Juhani Pallasmaa
Moving Still is in essence a project about fragrance and memory, it is curious about the process of steam distillation and extraction but, moreover, it is an exploration of the implications that arise from the adoption of such a practice at a prosumer level.
It asks, what does it means to truly engage your senses as you navigate the world around you? It asks, how might we use fragrance to better reflect on our lives lived? How might we use fragrance to better connect with the people around us? It asks, how could our sense of smell be used as a tool to help us remember important things we might be tempted to forget?
In a sense, this is work of design fiction - while I have developed a proof of concept for a portable fragrance still, it is not intended to be a product for the marketplace but rather an argument manifested in tangible form. Moving Still is a work of speculative narrative design and this portable fragrance still serves as the call to action that ushers the user into a reality where rather than wandering through a landscape with a camera in hand, they might instead follow their nose and try to capture its fragrance.
In addition to a portable fragrance still I have produced a small collection of peripheral objects, these pieces act a props that support the story that Moving Still is telling and they also act as vehicles for inquiry. While I have chosen to exhibit a selection of four peripheral objects, I have over the course of this year produced many more. The four objects I have chosen to exhibit represent four different areas of inquiry; industry, spirituality, communication, and commodification.
what are the tools that a hobbyist fragrance distiller might carry?
how might one privately reflect on a sense memory?
how might one share a sense memory with someone else?
how might one use fragrance as a tool to remember things?