Mindkits blog Wed Nov 4th 2009

Signal Transduction Pathways —the way that the signal of smell passes across the olfactory receptor to the olfactory bulb.

Thanks to Dawn Hutchesson and CoLab for providing equipment so we can run the video projection at night. Its responsive to the people and traffic moving past the window.

I have a hundred points of view, of reception and emission: the world and I combine.

We’ve had some great dialogues with visitors around the inclusion of ethics within all disciplines, multidisciplinary discourse, the difficulty that people find in describing taste sensations never before encountered, synesthetic sculptural number forms and the ability to sing drawings, geo-reality, and a blind friend’s description of a tree.

WHERE

Tuatara House

295 K’Rd, (opposite ArtSpace)

Newton, Auckland

WHO

Raewyn Turner and Dr Richard Newcomb

Raewyn Turner: r.turner@orcon.net.nz

Richard Newcomb: richard.newcomb@plantandfood.co.nz

WHEN

2-20 November 2009

Moday-Friday 9am-5pm

Saturday 10am-1pm

Co-drawing : the ocean of signals, receptors.

What happens when smells reach the acorn cup by Raewyn

The molecules float into cups, which send a little expression which excites the brain to sing the colour, texture, taste, weight of the odour. It produces a wave of sensation which leaves the body in a plume— streaming out behind—-a trail of scent —sillage.

I’m drawing the receptors, hollow acorn cups, and Richard has drawn transmembrane domains.

Neither of us has seen an actual one with our eyes, so they’re both imaginative diagrams.

The environment is an ocean of olfactory communications between all living beings…what do the receptors look like?

We’re sharing knowledge about receptors : Richard’s bio world and Raewyn’s imagined shapes and mechanisms.  We’re both asking questions about the invisible.

We’re shaped by the things that we like.  We’re talking about the word ‘like’—as in finding agreeable, enjoyable or satisfactory. We’re distilling the smell of used socks, placing them into a machine that releases the odours for our visitors. We ask them to colour code the smells.

Perhaps we don’t have much choice in the things that we like and dislike— as illustrated in the smelly t-shirt experiment.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7630893

This circuit was made with the notion of communication between plants and light.( with thanks to Diana Burgoyne and Brian Harris).  The plant will grow up and over the circuit and make it sing. Are there plant/insect/animal receptors that catch the emanations of human emotion? What of human to human signaling?

We’re finding differences and sameness in science and art: creativity and repetition.

Are receptors bound up with time? What will this period smell of in 50 years time? If we look back on us would our signals be imbued with anxiety or woud they be similar as those from all ages—we have the same concerns of finding and making food and shelter.

What would we preserve from this era that would indicate the signals that humans are emitting through skin and respiration.

Are we laying down trails of information for each other like ants—the ribbons and plumes of information that are taken up into receptors?

Epson have lent us a much brighter projector, and we’ve added the sounds of insects—when we walk around in the space we play the images and insect voices.

The environment is an ocean of olfactory signals…..of ribbons and plumes of chemical signals arising from all matter. As Terrance McKenna says, communication is the rider and matter is the horse.

I begin drawing Magellan’s invisible ship— the signal that we can’t perceive because we’ve never perceived it? Or because we don’t have the receptor?

I’m drawing what I think receptors look like.

Crossing Wires is up and running.  Extraction of socks odours are underway and members of the public are coming in to see what’s happening and talk olfaction, art, science and mental condition of New Zealand’s society.  The six smell projectors are working impressively well and odours a beginning to be coded into colours.