THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Copyright and use of this thesis This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author -subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Copyright Service. sydney.edu.au/copyright Sydney College of the Arts The University of Sydney DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2012 THESIS Osmologies: towards aroma composition David Haines May 2012 Osmologies: towards aroma composition Table of contents Acknowledgments. List of Illustrations and Tables. 3. Abstract. 4. Introduction: Osmologies 1. Chapter 1: Carnival of Networks 23. 1.1 Individuals on the same footing 30 1.2 Language 40. 1.3 Congregation of worlds 42. 1.4 Compositional Battlefields 44. 1.5 Heterogeneity 55. Discussion. 67. Chapter 2: Signals & Modes 75. 2.1 Noise Clouds 76. 2.2 Atmospherics 89. 2.3 Transductions 106. Chapter 3: Substances 116. 3.1 Notes 116. 3.2 Accords 129. 3.3 Fragrant Time 130. 3.4 Seasonal Time 134. 3.5 Thresholds 135. 3.6 Formulas 137. Discussion. 140. Conclusion 147. Bibliography. 155. I Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Brad Buckley for his most generous supervision, support and patience throughout my canditure. I would also like to thank John Conomos in his role as my secondary supervisor. I would like to acknowledge the help and support of the following people: Dr Peter Blarney for his wonderful comments and editorial work. Professor Douglas Kahn and Dr Fran Dyson, Dr Anne Finegan, Dr Julie Rrap, Dr Debra Dawes, Kathryn Ryan, Mark Shorter, Dr Peter Charuk, Anne Feran, Mark Shorter, Clare Milledge and Noel Peters. I would like to acknowledge all of the people who gave the art works produced throughout this research a platform in which they could reach a public, especially Sally Breen, Anthony Whelan, Nick Chambers, Jonathon Holmes, Lucy Bleach and Tia Macintyre. I would also like to thank my family, especially John and Kerrie Haines for their support and encouragement and also give the greatest thankyou to my wonderful partner in crime, Joyce Hinterding. ii List of Illustrations and Tables Fig 1: Aroma Studio: Blue Mountains NSW, 21. Fig 2: Earthstar: Installation detail, Haines & Hinterding 2008-2009, 74. Fig 3: Working as an assistant to Hermann Nitsch in the 1988 Bicentennial Biennale, 84. Fig 4: The Phantom Leaves: First iteration of the work: Plimsoll Gallery Hobart, 101. Fig 5: Kirlian Image of Mint from the Garden. The Phantom Leaves. 2010, 105. Fig 6: Images of "Smell Blind Date" copyright James Auger, 109. Fig 7: Earth Star Haines and Hinterding 2008-2009. Installation detail of smell station at Gallery Of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery 119. Fig8: Earth Star Haines and Hinterding 2008-2009. Installation View: GOMA, Queensland Art Gallery 121. Fig 9: Self Portrait in Scent: Sketch #1 (1994) Clara Ursitti, 121. Fig 10: Typical GC analysis of Jasmine absolute, 123. Table 1.0: Perfume in the style of Chanel Number 5, 138. Table 2.0: Formula for Phantom Leaves 005: Violets on Fire, 139. Fig 11: Page from notebook during the creation of "Ionisation and Terrestrial", the aroma components of Earthstar, Haines and Hinterding 2008-2009. 146. iii ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate aroma and how it might become a medium of composition for artists. Olfaction thus far, has been an underutilized sensation in Contemporary Art. Within this study there is the intention to try to think through the problems of a praxis that brings with it a critical engagement on the topic of olfaction, while also questioning how aroma might enter the culture of art more intensively than it has before. The objective was to think about aroma in its widest sense, in a way that does justice to its dynamics. On one side, aromas arrive as manifestations of the senses from our contact with chemicals in the world; on the other side, there is the idea of composing with aroma that brings us into the dimension of aesthetics and practice as they belong to art making. What develops from this study are wider questions about the compositional intensities that make up the open systems of life, as a complex network of relations between human and nonhuman dimensions and the role in this of information and expression, as synthesiser and conjoiner? Things coming in and being received by the senses, and things composed into the world as new entities; this is because everything about the olfactory is pointed towards an intertwining of these perspectives - between a world given to consciousness and an outside that belongs to the molecules that are carriers of aroma. In between these inward and outward flows, arises the phenomenological productivity of representations. Throughout the period of this study there has been an intensive engagement with aroma chemistry and undergoing the practice of smell training, along with the first steps in composing artistically from a library of aroma molecules in the studio. The works that have occurred along the way are discussed within the paper. These are the two perfumes that form part of the collaborative installation "Earthstar," with Joyce Hinterding in 2008 that premiered at the Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery and also seen at Ars Electrónica in Linz, Austria, in 2010, winning an Award of Distinction in the Hybrid Arts category. Various iterations of the "Phantom Leaves" are discussed, the first version of which was shown at Plimsoll Gallery in Hobart and eventually extended as part of the solo exhibition, "Cosmic Vapour" exhibited at Breenspace, Sydney in 2010. The two perfumes in the collaborative work "The Immaterials: Language-Molecules-Vibrations" are also discussed. Additional works of contemporary art that have broached the Olfactory also appear, however, it has not been the intention of this study to provide a comprehensive overview of all that has been done in regards to the olfactory within the field, but instead, I have chosen to use particular examples where appropriate throughout the text. IV INTRODUCTION: OSMOLOGIES By convention there is sweet and bitter, hot and cold, by convention there is colour; but in truth there are atoms and the void -Democritus, Fragment 9. Aroma is generally ill considered within the Western theoretical cannon. It is underutilized as a medium in contemporary art and its biology is not yet fully understood by science.1 This surprising lack that appears across all of these areas, presents an opportunity for a constructivist-style theoretical investigation that becomes a starting point for a wide-field investigation, representative of both theory and practice. The use of the term osmologies in the title of this chapter, is an attempt to find a word to encompass a vast topic that is seemingly open enough to capture the speculative nature of this approach, one that entails a compositional bricolage of research interests around the topic that affirms the way many artists inhabit the studio, with receptive openness to materials, subjects and ideas. The intention is to extend this term within this study, beyond its use within certain contexts to describe how some cultures place the olfactory as central to their understanding of the cosmos.2 This is not to exclude that particular meaning but instead to capture some of the spirit of such a total encompassing. Within this study there is the intention to try to think through the problems of a praxis that brings with it a critical engagement of olfaction, while also questioning how aroma might enter the culture of art more intensively than it has before. By thinking about a "bi-directionality of things as they are in the world and their relationship to being, by entering into a relationship between the partially concealed and the de-concealing of human and non-human forces of the aromatic exchange at its simplest level, an interaction between molecules and perceptions, we need to think about aroma in a way that does justice to this dynamic state that gives us a sense of the 1 See - Jim Drobnick, Introduction: Olfactocentrism in The Smell Culture reader. (Oxford, New York: Berg Publishing, 2006), 3. 2 The word is found in the context described in Chapter 3- Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Universes of Odour In the book, aroma, and the cultural history of smell (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 95. 1 intermingling "anticipated and unanticipated" nature of this flow. These intermingling's arise from the underpinnings of what Maria L. Assad identifies as Michel Serres's central concern in his book Genesis, in which he outlines "a new object for philosophy" belonging to the multiple and multiplicity:3 A flight of screaming birds, a school of herring tearing through the water like a silken sheet, a cloud of chirping crickets, a booming whirlwind of mosquitos..