Smellmap: Amsterdam – Olfactory Art & Smell Visualisation

Creating a smellmap of a city is a collaborative exercise. During a series of smellwalks, local participants identify distinct aromas emanating from specific locations and record the description, expectation, intensity, personal association, and reaction. I then analyse this data, along with conversations arising from the walks, and select a set of smells that convey the smellscape of the city at that moment in time, visualsing the scents and their locations in the city as a “map”. The resulting map visualisations are propositions: indications of what one might smell in a certain place. The map is accompanied by scents, which are the nasal stimuli, and a catalyst for discussion. This visualisation/olfactory art emphasises human interaction with a vast set of contestable sensory data.