“We had a smell, but we lost it…”. Sensory Maps. Tw; In; Li; © Copyright Sensory Maps

I decided to map them by smell colour. Development work includes calculating colour for each scent used in the perfumes and developing an opacity for each colour based on frequency of occurrence in the range of scents – the more frequently a scent is used the greater it’s opacity.

“Sensory Maps” with introduction by Amy Sande-Friedman in J. Acker et al. (eds) ‘The Common Issue No. 5’ – May 2013 Canterbury Times / “Heaven Scent” by Lowri Stafford in / April 25 2013

Resulting layering of smells onto the map renders the smellscape as a dynamic and contested airspace. Notable whiffs included “Gym people”, “pretentious coffee roast” and “food trucks – Halal and Chinese” as well as a “Wet, dusty dog”, “Phone booth” and “wet garbage bins”.

I map city smellscapes, lead smell walks and write. My work is at the intersection of human-perceived smellscapes, cartography and the communication of ‘eye-invisible’ sensed data. I use a range of media including digital design, watercolour, animation, scent diffusion and sculpture to generate smell maps to encourage and stimulate people ...

Many maps of olfactory experience fix smells in space and neglect to take account of their temporal nature. There are multiple rhythms involved in smell walking; walking pace, heart rate, sniffing rate, and smells are perceived for a period of time.

2023 – ‘A Paris Smellwalk meets Matthew Paris’ Itinerary Maps’, at Meeting of Experts of Senses and Synaesthesia, Kunst Museum, The Hague. 2023 – ‘Smell Mapping: How to Visualise Olfactory Narrative‘, at American Historical Association 136th Annual Meeting.

This map forms part of a series of New York City block maps completed over a number of years.

To retell the story of Hallé’s smell walk visually I looked to the work of a C12th Benedictine monk, Matthew Paris, who collected tales of pilgrimage routes and created ‘journey maps’. Matthew Paris’ pictorial itineraries represent a spiritual rather …

“We had a smell, but we lost it…”. Sensory Maps. Tw; In; Li; © Copyright Sensory Maps