Laura Rosmann, current intern at MIC Toi Rerehiko, sits down with New Zealand based artist Raewyn Turner to discuss her recent work ReSense and explore her innovative practices regarding synaesthesia and anaesthesia of place.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?

I was at the SCANZ Residency in 2006. Around that time, there was a lot of discussion in the media about the Abu Ghraib images which questioned basic human rights obligations. I was thinking about our reaction in New Zealand to the news about the War on Terror. Every time I saw or heard the news headlines, I felt anxious; if one is in a stressful situation, everything will be associated with the smell of that time and place. I wanted to find an analogy to talk about local and remote world problems and my own fear.

I was exploring the viridian and enchanted landscape of New Plymouth, wondering about its relationship to the media-informed anxiety when my friend, ex-Elam pal artist Fiona Clarke, told me about the agent orange buried beneath its soil, hidden beneath its lush green mantle.

Diana was at the SCANZ residency and our collaboration began when she utilized a sensor that is sensitive to variations in the tone and intensity within the colour palette to create a responsive frequency generator to my palette of green. She attached her circuit sensor to the computer screen while displaying video, thereby creating sounds corresponding to the differing greens. The result is an audio-visual sketch of the colour green.

All three pieces of ReSense explore issues of human relationship and environmental concerns, focusing on the under-explored olfactory sense. How are these concepts connected through scent?

The whole of nature is communicating, exchanging information with smell and chemical compounds, constituting an ocean of olfactory information. The signal of smell is a significant cipher that can inform us.

Both FLAP and Re-Sense are explorations of the olfactory sense and its place in our landscapes and in our everyday lives. FLAP is about the smells that we take for granted in our homes and provides us with a multi-sensory re-visioning of the very humble sock. Like chocolate and cocoa, humans exude their smell of place, so too, worn and smelly socks. We are not really that interested in stinky socks, but it was an efficient way to collect the scent of humans standing in their locations on this earth.

In ancient Maori culture, the fragrant essence of ourselves is an indicator of our specific location on earth. In a conversation with Maori elder Huirangi Waikerepuru, Owai Marae, New Plymouth, he described it very much like the human plume which streams out behind us.

There were several ways to present the smell of the socks, and initially I opted for analysis with an idea of rebuilding the odours with olfactory materials. In that way the olfactory element could be made abstract. I wore socks and had the smell extracted and analysed by Robert Winz at Plant and Food, using HS-SPME-GC-MS (headspace-solid phase micro extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), a method that was developed to determine the profiles of volatile substances. The chromatograms that Robert produced were not what were to be expected based on the literature. On analysis, peaks were found which indicated unknown substance as well as Butylated Hydroxytoluene, an antioxidant!

Lucky refers to the intersensory experience of gambling. Lucky fragrance was developed to fortify the lower senses of the gambler playing with chance on pokie machines, which are essentially random number generators. The formula for the fragrance contains essential oils of rosemary, lemon, bergamot, clove, cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood, peppermint, patchouli, vetiver, geranium, and clary sage.

The finger wipes are scrolls of papyrus. Subsequent to being passed as 100% safe by the NZ authorities, the papyrus will be coated with a bioluminescent genetically engineered product that will produce glowing fingertips.

Bioluminescent genetically engineered fingertips? Sounds dangerous!

That's why I opted for a perfume instead. It could be dangerous for casinos. The product is deemed 100% safe by its manufacturers, however it was undergoing a "status of substance" report by Erma, the Environmental Management Authorities in NZ. Erma’s rigorous testing would ensure that there are no risks in this product which would in effect raise issues of gambling with our economically valuable image of a ‘clean green’ environment. The substance would be sourced from a biotechnology company whose core business is based upon newly discovered genes from deep-water marine bioluminescent organisms which have broad applications for biomedical research, drug discovery, and entertainment. The luminance would be activated by the player spitting on the paper and rolling it onto their fingertips, so their finger would glow before pressing the pokie machine button.

Describe the collaboration process between you and Canadian artists, Diana Burgoyne.

It began as a very spontaneous collaboration. I was very interested in the way Diana was using electronics and impressed by her pared down sense of aesthetic. She has a very clear vision and in working with her, my own aesthetic has simplified compared to my usually complicated way of working. We used SKYPE to communicate through online phone calls and video to work together across the distance between New Zealand and Canada. There is a constant open dialogue between us, which means being open to different ways of working. We show each other new discoveries, talk about new ideas, conduct tests and research.

One of the things we both enjoy working with is materials and how to manipulate them. When we were getting ready for the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia in Granada, Spain in 2009, Diana coached me through soldering via SKYPE to solder the pieces for ReSense. I have been trying to learn electronics and Diana has helped in understanding this process more. That’s one of the things of working in collaboration is the cross training which is a wonderful thing, learning as we need it. It to see our work come together in the complete ReSense exhibit as only smaller components of the exhibit had been presented previously in Granada and at the Interactive Futures’09:Stereo in Vancouver, Canada.

How has your own works combined with Diana’s to produce FLAP?

FLAP brings two of our individual projects together. Diana’s project, AUDIO QUILT was an interactive work reflecting community in a new way using sound and voice. The community’s voices were ‘sewn together in an auditory quilt, allowing them to experience themselves through a different channel, and revealing aspects of their lives and reflecting their community. It also draws on my Art + Science PLUME project, an olfactory investigation, created with molecular biologist, Richard Newcomb from Plant and Food Research Laboratory in New Zealand. Crossing Wires, the resulting exhibition, allowed members of the public to have their odour extracted from their socks by steam distillation and encounter science in a new and exciting way.

FLAP further builds on the work we did in ReSense, continuing our sensory exploration of nationhood at a more human, social level, by considering the powerful associations we make with authentic body odour. FLAP grows out of a notion that, like the bandwidths of light and sound that are beyond unaided human perception, olfactory signals from humans are mainly unsensed and beyond comprehension.

In the future, if we were to consider the fragrance of this period, would it be a perfume or the smell of human anxiety?

Today, everything is perfumed and deodorised. Humans are giving off smell but we are not tuned into them. That’s what inspired Diana and me to develop FLAP more along those lines of the missing human smell through the socks. One of the big problems in working with smell is how to actually release it and we will further develop the lighting, the effectiveness of the human smell and the interactive components of FLAP.

Where has your research on human scent taken you? How do Canadians and New Zealanders measure up when it comes to body odour?

Well, Diana had stored her Canadian socks in glass jars which broke in transit and which sat in their freight boxes in my car for a couple of days. There was an extremely rancid odour which I hadn't associated with the boxes, and was instead under the mistaken impression something had spilt and had gone rotten in the car. When we removed the boxes the odour disappeared and we realised how potent those Canadian socks were!

In human smell, there is primary smell which is genetic, a secondary smell which is created by the smell of a place and its people has a direct relationship to its location on earth: the climate and culture, the food we eat, industrial, domestic commercial environment, the water from the sea,  river, mountain, the earth which yields our local plants, flowers and food, and technologies which may change the immediate atmosphere, the vapour trails, carbon dioxide and temperature, and a tertiary smell which is the playground of perfumes and deodorants.

In your short film, Lucky, you question whether you can find a way to influence luck. Can you describe the genesis for your desire to develop a magic potion for luck?

Lucky was initiated by my personal experience of being on a low income and finding four leaf clovers. I’m a solo parent and at the time I had $5 in the bank and I had found 16 four leaf clovers. The Skytower had recently been constructed and could be seen from any location in Auckland—although I could hold my finger up and blot it out from my sight. Every time Skytower was in my field of vision, it reminded me about gambling. I started investigating gambling, and the luck of my four leaf clovers, though my own gambling investment was only ever $2 to $5.

What started out as a playful look at the idea of feeling lucky, lead to my discovery of a vein of familial gambling and my wishful quest to create a lucky potion so gamblers everywhere could beat the system that builds the casino monoliths. Its common knowledge, the belief, the assumption between experience in gambling and experience of life –that progress often incorporates a measure of luck.

Lucky fragrance was developed to fortify the lower senses of the gambler playing with chance on pokie machines, which are essentially random number generators. It was created with Louise Crouch, an international commercial perfumer. Randomness and Luck are emphasized in the shape of the perfume container by incorporating a random number generator into the design, causing each container to be similar but unique.

Why did you focus on the clover as the prominent symbol of luck?

I think its best to work with what I have and I had 16 four leaf clovers in my hand. Later, I found four leaf clover plants and began growing hundreds of four leaf clovers, contemplating going into business as a luck busker. I grew, harvested and tested four-leaf clovers on pokie machines in casinos but they were never lucky. Subsequently, I made them into homeopathic tinctures for tongue drops (not lucky!) and finger wipes to make the button - pressing finger glow, and a fragrance (available now!).

Tell us more about your future work with olfactory exploration.

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to deepen my research and practice by working in collaboration with Richard Newcomb. Richard is the project leader of the ‘Cybernose’ research programme which aims to develop an artificial nose using biological odorant receptors from insects. I’m working on an Art + Science Collaboration PLUME, exploring the power of olfaction in collaboration with Richard.

Since November 2009, I have become embedded within the Molecular Sensing team at Plant and Food Research, doing hands-on science, learning DNA extraction, cell assay, and training in aspects of molecular and sensory science.

Precipitation is a proposed video work which is emerging from Richard and my collaborative investigations of the human thermal plume which has a maximum upward airspeed of 0.25 metres per second and continues to rise above the body, carrying with it molecules of olfactory information.

Diana and I are working on a third piece called Sweatshirt, which involves a fragrance emitting costume utilising electronic fans so that the person that wears the costume becomes a transport of perfumes made for love. It’s a work in progress questioning the effect and role of fine perfumes made for love and affection on human behaviour. We asked the community if we could have their unwanted perfumes – they were very generous and we were able to create the veil of fragrance with the electronic circuitry. While Diana was in NZ we made a prototype performance of it and we hope to work on it more in a residency together next year.

Further Information:

Reawyn's work was recently on display at MIC Toi Rerehiko Gallery on 321 Karahangape Road.