larissa hjorth
Up there amongst aerosol cheese and spray-on hair in Time magazine's list of the worst ideas of the century is smell-o-vision, a Willy Wonker-type invention pioneered by Swiss professor Hans Laube in the '50s, to spectacular failure. The problem, I suppose, was partly that the smell factor seemed simply an unnecessary gimmick-audiences already found their cinematic experience sufficiently immersive without the engagement of a// their senses.
But it seems synaesthesia is about to make a comeback. Riding on the claim that smell, more so than other senses, triggers associative reactions in the punters' minds, newly developed computer-controlled devices which can apparently create an approximation of almost any scent are being pushed at the advertising world , which, after fifty years, looks ready to reassess this gimmick.
it's this kitschy, cutesy, artificial environment that Larissa Hjorth's latest installation project at the Experimental Art Foundation plays on. Nosegay [NonPopular Sound Princess] is a synaesthete's wonderlandsound, colour and odour mix in a seductive, comical and bizarre melange. Hjorth's references to scent are by turns floral and faecal; a row of toilets function as seats for viewers of a cinematic-scale projection, and floral scents are pumped into the gallery space.
The film Hjorth shows in her 'smell cinema' has some of the veneer of advertising, but is more enigmatic in its purpose. Its visual refrain of artificial flowers, framed in close-up, sometimes distorted or pixilated , is seemingly innocuous- pretty, and I imagine, intentionally vacant. The seductiveness of the film is complicated by the presence of the toilet seats the artist expects us to sit on. We have to abase ourselves, or perhaps become part of some overarching toilet joke, in order to watch