FLAP:DIANA BURGOYNE & RAEWYN TURNER  2010

Following on from our 1st collaborative project ReSense which we developed at BNMI - Banff Centre for the Arts, we created a new work called FLAP.

Our conversation revolved around whether we could create a work using both the synthetic smells of nature and authentic human smell, and whether the smells from our respective countries would differ.

Flap features fifty jars with authentic human odours inside (courtesy of socks that have been well worn by New Zealanders and Canadians). With flapping lids, the jars create a variable rhythm while sporadically releasing the scents of New Zealanders and Canadians. It is what happens next, when those smells and sounds meet the senses of exhibition visitors, which interests Turner and Burgoyne most. In particular, they wonder what automatic associations each of us will experience, and what that will tell us about ourselves as New Zealanders and Canadians. Utilising traditional mechanistic devices which are activated by the audience’s shadow, and recalling the concept of archived human smells held in jars in the Stasi files, FLAP engages with the difficulty of actual preservation of the smell of humans standing on earth in 2013. We don’t yet understand how the olfactory molecule manages to affect the mind but future generations may come to understand the significance of unconscious sensing of human smell signatures and seek ways to preserve their messages.

FLAP explores the intimate landscape of the smells that we take for granted and provides us with a multi-sensory re-visioning of the very humble dirty sock.

With a focus  on developing the human as a sensing instrument, FLAP asks if we can monitor humans and the environment as we merge into a collective cyborgian version of ourselves. While the whole of nature is communicating with olfactory signals the realm of olfaction cyphers is largely uncharted despite their effects on human behavior and emotions.

Flap combines Burgoyne’s  strengths in performance art and electronics with Raewyn Turner’s research into the as-yet unsensed human plume.
While we were making our first work, ReSense at Banff our conversation revolved around whether we could create a work using authentic human smell.  Raewyn took her socks to Plant and Food Research NZ where her smell was extracted from them using HS-SPME-GC-MS analysis. 

See more on our blog Culturesoundsmell

FLAP brings two of our individual projects together. It draws on Raewyn’s “PLUME” project, an olfactory investigation, created with Richard Newcomb, a molecular biologist. “Crossing Wires”, the resulting exhibition allowed members of the public to have their socks distilled and encounter science in a new and exciting way. www.crossingwireslab.tumblr.com

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.