Smelly things...

I was given 'Smell' as my sense to research for an area of this publication. I know what a nose is, I know that I can smell things that I like, dislike, new and old, but I didn't realise how much smell is linked to memory and nostalgia.

I began by watching a documentary about smell and London, and what sort of smells remind us of a certain place. The majority of people that were asked were in their 60's, along with a few younger people too. However, what i find most interesting is that many of the older generation referred to the smell of London being of 'smog' and 'smoke'. In relation to now, I don't think that is how i would describe the sense of it. This made me think about how over time things change, yet they are still remembered. For this project, we wanted to define a human being at this precise moment, the modern day (for us) so that once it was published we would be able to look back on it, reflectively. We watched a video about being a Human Being, and how we all have the same characteristic, and organs, but we equally have our own peculiarities, that make us different.

In order to be able to define a human I feel like we have to deal firstly with the physical being and then with the emotional being, through our senses, and how they allow us to connect with others and what we can do or choose to do with the body you have been given.

Using Smell,

1. To associate us with our emotions, and memories,

2. The brain can remember 4000-10,000 smells

3. Some believe that the smell receptors are directly liked to the brain (our emotional seat) and that's why we remember emotions through smells

4. One man described that he remembers the day his father died through the smell of rain on a pavement, as this was the weather on that day

5. 'Nothing revives the past so completely as a small that way once associated with it'

- In this way if we were to define smells of now, then when people looked back, they would be able to remember a particular time

6. Proust's hypothesis of odour memory

To be able to make it relevant to today, and keep the theme of Comfort going, I think that we need to find out the smells that represent today and that others share with one another, so that they are things that will be remembered in time to come.