Arduino | Adobe After Effect | Photoshop
Interaction Design | Scent Art | Human Center Design | Future Prospects For Artistic Practice | Experience Design
07/10/2021 - 11/12/2021
Individual project
Awakening: Scent Archive
Scent interactive installation
Awakening: Scent Archive is an experimental scent interaction installation with performance and scent workshops as its main forms of expression. This project aims to explore the boundaries of human senses and existence, and the role of scent in awakening forgotten memories. According to the Proust effect, scent has the unique ability to instantly awaken previously forgotten but vivid, emotionally charged memories. Scent has a symbiotic presence with breath, and most of a human's emotional memories are stored in the sense of smell. I wanted to find a potential way to enhance that part of people's forgotten memories and thus deepen the perception of their self-existence.
Art direction - Yuqing Liu
Interaction Design - Yuqing Liu
Video editing - Yuqing Liu
Photography- Yuqing Liu
AWAKENING: SCENT ARCHIVE
Background
Nowadays, Alzheimer's disease has evolved into a global social problem. This project aims to explore a potential method to remind and retrieve memories through scent.
This project consists of three parts, the Scent Memory Experience Box, the Scent Archive and the Scent Workshop. These three components work together to effectively trigger the audience's olfactory memory through the scent interaction installation.
PART I
Scent Memory Boxes
The first part is the five scent boxes. Here, the audience can experience my personal memories and emotions evoked through five specific scents. This is the awakening part of the project where I want the audience to get used to the way memories are processed through scent by inviting them to experience my own scent memories.
SCENT BOX 01
Smell Memory
of Summer Morning
SCENT BOX 02
Smell Memory
of Homesickness
SCENT BOX 03
Smell Memory
of Seaside Time
SCENT BOX 04
Smell Memory of
Leisurely Afternoon
SCENT BOX 05
Smell Memory of
The Pandemic Period
PART II
Scent Memory Archive
The second section is the Scent Memory Archive, which provides the audience with a wide range of real-life scent samples. Viewers can randomly pick a scent tape from one of the archive packs, smell it, then write down their triggered memories on paper and put them in the corresponding archive pack. They can also view other people's memory descriptions of a particular scent and share their feelings with each other.
After the exhibition, I collected many descriptions of scent memories. These interesting phenomena have helped me to explore and understand how scent affects people's emotions and triggers memories. The selection of scents will be crucial in different ways.
PART III
Smell Combination & Workshop
The scent workshop invites audiences to join the process of creating scent combinations so that they can explore more deeply how scent triggers memories and emotions.
Scent Combinations based on my experience
I created six scent combinations based on my own memories, to provide examples and encourage them to make their own smell combinations.
Result
Each person told their story through scent in their own unique way, and those memories buried in their minds were evoked and remembered again by the scents. Some of the audience members used photographs from their mobile phones to help trigger the memories along with the scents. Others would stop in front of the scent combinations, take in the scents in silence, and read the stories of the memories evoked by those scent combinations.
