In commemoration of Singapore’s 50th birthday, AllSense, Singapore’s leading designer of scents for brands, hotels and retailers, will be organizing a series of 8 Scent Walks, to be held from 3rd June to 10th June 2015. The information co-created with participants of the walks will be translated into a ‘City Scent Map’, where the collective thoughts on each location’s iconic scents will be captured for posterity.
AllSense has commissioned Ms Kate McLean (UK), academic, researcher and artist, who is the world’s leading designer of city scent maps to guide these walks and compile the data into a visual representation of Singapore’s first Scent Map. McLean’s break-through work links human perception of ‘scent data’ with urban spaces through a process called ‘maplandscaping’.
Renowned for her walks in New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Milan, and her work in scent mapping, Kate will now be conducting her first walk in Asia, in time for Singapore’s jubilee year.
The human sense of smell is our direct pathway to memory, with a unique ability to transport us back in space and time to previous encounters with the same smell.
The ability of smell to evoke nostalgic memories and emotions of places, events and people is culturally and generationally unique. As such it is the perfect vehicle for us to journey over time and space to Singapore’s past and present in order to capture the first and only ‘Scent Map’ or ‘ScentScape’ that truly narrates an emotional story of Singapore as a local place of belonging and identity.
‘It is theorised that our response to odour is visceral, and invoked through direct memory, because smell is the only human sense whereby processing of olfactory data passes directly into the amygdala, a part of the limbic system. The limbic system is considered responsible for emotional, learning and memory, this suggests that smell is both far more likely to evoke memories and generate immediate emotional responses.’ (Jacob, n.d.; Fifth Sense, n.d.; Mastin, 2010; Ackerman, 1990)
AllSense has partnered with International Flavors and Fragrances on this landmark Singaporean event. IFF, one of the world’s leading fragrance and flavour creators, has previous experience working with McLean on her Amsterdam Scent Map.
IFF will be providing its team of perfumers and flavourists to accompany Kate on her Scent Walks, to assist with the creative elaboration and documentation of local Singaporean sensory landmarks or ‘smellmarks’. Our resident IFF ‘white coat’ Scent Walkers will be open to discussion during the walks on the topic of Singapore’s unique and iconic tastes and aromas, and how these experiences uniquely define our city.
With 2015 being the meaningful SG50, AllSense decided that it would be the best time to launch the city-state’s first ever scent walk and involve the community in these specialised trails covering locations all over Singapore, such as Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Joo Chiat and Orchard Road.
Be a part of history, sign up for Asia’s first ‘Scent Walks’ that will take you deep into the heart of your own city to discover that ‘sense of place’ goes well beyond what the eye sees!
We invite you to take part with us in this series of Scent Walks, to engage with us in a dialogue on the sensory design of urban landscapes and to connect with our city of Singapore, on the eve of her 50th Birthday, on a level of nostalgia, memory and emotion.
Please click on the following link for a full listing of the Scent Walk locations and timings: http://allsense.com.sg/scent-walk-singapore/
You can sign up for a walk of their choice via this link:
http://allsense.com.sg/scent-walk-singapore/sign-up-for-a-scent-walk/
Editorial by Wilsurn “BeDazzled” Lim
