Volatile Architectures

from Intumus: Interior Design Reader Edited by Mark Taylor and Juleanna Preston 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Jim Drobnick

Artist, critic and curator, Jim Drobnick explores the potential for architectural thinking to engage with aesthetics via sensorial experience and olfaction. He suggests that the transcendent formality of the white cube gallery, in its pollution-free pristine state, relegates architecture to a purely visual state. Noting that the lack of aromatic smell provides less than full or lived body experience, he exposes a recent trend to include smell in contemporary postmodern museums. Their use of sensory saturation, assisted by diffusion technology and synthesised smells, is designed to engage the visitor on a physiological and psychological level. This process of opening the interior to the full range of the senses counters visual primacy and recognises that colour and smell have significant effect on our perception of space and objects.

'Volatile effects' is a phrase utilized by Walter Pater in his dismissal of architecture from the realm of the aesthetic.¹ He postulated that architecture, as the most concrete and utilitarian of arts, could not evoke the subtleties of the human spirit; rather, it could only present an artistic sensibility via oblique traces and ethereal suggestions:

Architecture which begins in a practical need, can only express by vague hint or symbol the spirit or mind of the artist … [T]hese spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it by reflection.²

Contrary to Pater's denial of architecture's artistic potential, I would like to appropriate and rehabilitate such 'lurking' sensations, 'vague hints' and 'volatile effects' as precisely the terms that can be employed to describe an olfactory approach to architecture. For Pater, these effects were more metaphorical than real, gathered as it were by reminiscence and reflection. In contrast, the volatile architectures I will discuss below are vividly sensorial and experiential – they are literally fragrant, pungent, or reeking. The aromatic dimension of buildings is one that has been for the most part neglected in architectural theory, yet the volatile effects created by odoriferous materials, ventilated scents, and other wafting perceptions can significantly influence one's experience of a structure. It would be simplistic to merely celebrate the inclusion of odours as some kind of corrective

to the inodorate state of architectural thinking; I will instead outline a few of the issues and problematics of smell, art, and architecture. (… p 263)

Museum Atmospheres

A curious development has been brewing recently regarding the inclusion of smell in the once-sterilized realm of the museum. Articles in the popular press not only note olfactory absence, but make demands for its inclusion. Witness a reviewer's disappointment at the display of 1960s costumes and music memorabilia at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum:

Does this exhibit 'capture the spirit of the psychedelic era?' Hell no. This is a collection of historical objects in a museum. There's not a whiff of patchouli oil in the place. It smells like school. If you want to get an idea of what the psychedelic era was like, find a copy of Electric Music for the Mind and Body by Country Joe and The Fish, put Section 43 on that dusty turntable in the corner, light some incense, turn out all the lights and set your mind to 'wander.'³

And in a laudatory review of 'The American Lawn' at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, praises were heaped upon the innovative display technology, which engaged visitors by providing creative ways to see, touch, interact with, and move around the exhibition – but the absence of the smell of grass was mourned:

Our suspicions that the museum experience can never truly simulate the real thing are confirmed, however: the fragrance that is so much a part of the 'lawn experience' is missing.⁴

How should these comments be interpreted? Are they evidence of a nostalgia for times past so excessive that objects without the requisite immediacy frustrate more than satisfy? Does today's audience expect the museum to provide a sensorially complete experience – to counteract the anaesthetized routine of everyday life? Is this the first intimation of a groundswell of support for something like a 'museum of smells' – as Andy Warhol (an enthusiastic perfume collector) envisioned thirty years ago?

Early in the twentieth century, Clive Bell derided the gloominess of a 'museum atmosphere' that enveloped works of art and asphyxiated visitors. 'Society,' he suggested, 'can do something for itself and for art by blowing out of the museums and galleries the dust of erudition and the stale incense of hero-worship.'⁵ What Bell was advocating by means of olfactory reference was a revolution in museum philosophy, one that privileged the direct experience of emotion over that of scholarly sycophantism, that favoured inclusivity and democratization over mediation and intimidation by experts, that permitted visitors to make their own decisions and judgments rather than accepting the dogma of tradition. How literally Bell meant his comments about ventilating and

reodorizing the museum is a matter of debate, but in the 1980s, institutions as diverse as amusement parks, living history sites, heritage centres, science museums, and other tourist attractions began to infuse their exhibitions with a wide variety of smells for reasons remarkably similar to the ones Bell articulated: to provide intense, immediate sensations, to make cultural experiences accessible to all, and to engage visitors in a personal, interactive manner.

Below are four perspectives on how postmodern museums utilize smell in their exhibitions: as heterogeneous stimulation, for sensory saturation, as an indicator of authenticity, and to engage with visitors on a more subtle perceptual level, one with implicit physiological or psychological effects.

Postmodern museums are defined against their modernist counterparts by virtue of their heterogeneity. That is, they participate in and exemplify the postmodern trend towards ambiguously defined spaces, ones that combine multiple functions and behaviours. The failure of the patrician class to preserve the museum as an elite, personal enclave has forced it to welcome a larger and more diverse public. Without abandoning the prestige of 'high' art, commercial, culinary, and entertainment factors have been intertwined with what is traditionally deemed the 'aesthetic.' Museums have appropriated elements from theme parks, malls, boutiques, food courts, and other types of cultural architectures. Given the indistinct boundaries and blurring of activities, aromas from in-house restaurants and cafés, perfumes from gift shops and other odours cross over the threshold and permeate the inner sanctum of artistic worship.

'Heterosmia,' a preponderance of smells from disparate sources, is my term to signify the condition of the postmodern museum. This is in contradistinction to the anosmic condition of the conventional museum. Heterosmia is not necessarily a condition sought out by postmodern art institutions; it is more an unintended result of the mixing and close juxtaposition of previously separated activities. Like the indoor mall, in which scents from a myriad of shops circulate and commingle, the heterosmic condition of the postmodern museum is one that has developed as a consequence of decisions about real estate, tourism, audience attendance, and the desire to transform a specialized institution into a one-stop, multiple-interest entertainment package.

Advances in aroma diffusion technology and the chemistry of synthetic compounds have led to scent being one of the most fashionable additions to the museum's repertoire of effects. Synthetic scents imply a certain power over nature, over history, over the limitations of visual artifacts; they demonstrate an institution's hipness towards multimedia and sensory-saturated viewing environments; they prove a vivid marketing tool; and serve as a quick fix for the image of the museum so that, despite the multiple crises challenging its credibility, it can avert self-scrutiny and structural change.

The use of smell as part of the 'five senses experience' – or what I call 'aromatopia' – gives the impression that an exhibition is a comprehensive, fully embodied encounter. Employed mostly by living museums and populist entertainments with a quasi-educational agenda, aromatopias draw upon the literary conception of the five senses (prevalent for the past two millennia) to convey the feeling of a complete, total, and all-encompassing nature. In some postmodern attractions, the rhetoric of total experience is nothing but a gimmick: a Madame Tussaud's exhibit supposedly featuring 'the smells of London' consists merely of theatrical smoke in the Chamber of Horrors. Other examples are better intentioned and more earnest. Living museums, for instance, purport to convey the full sensory experience of what it was like to live in a previous historical era:

You can see and touch clothes as they were in the sixteenth century, you can eat Tudor food, you can listen to Tudor speech patterns, songs and music, use Tudor tools, walk around Tudor buildings, smell Tudor herbs.⁶

This multi-sensory strategy challenges the pedantry and dullness of the old-fashioned history museum, with its over-reliance on text, images, and decontextualized artefacts. Reliving the smells of a medieval town or pioneer homestead sets up expectations that require examination, as spectacle and myth collide with education and history. Like Foucault's 'heterotopia,' aromatopias are sites of polyvalency where orthodox behaviours are shed and alternative possibilities temporarily inhabited. The intensity and diversity of smells demarcates the museum's experience as decidedly 'other' – one olfactorily coded to be outside the routine of the ordinary and everyday.

Perhaps the most problematic employment of smells is their use to artificially heighten the 'realism' of the viewing experience, affirm the 'authenticity' of objects and secure the 'legitimacy' of the representations of other historical periods or cultures. Whether it is the Museum of the City of New York, where visitors experience facsimiles of historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, that are specially scented to smell 'old,' or the Smithsonian, where garbage and urine smells were diffused for an exhibit on the inner city, smells have been tactically employed to convey factuality, validity, the real.⁷ Alexander Wilson provides, for example, the following description of a Disney ride where synthesized odours reinforce the realism of virtual environments:

[W]e sail past simulated examples of biotic communities, whole underground rooms like display cases in a natural history museum, only here when you cross the desert region a hot wind blows in your face, and the jungle smells of water and decaying plants. Around another bend in the river we reach the Family Farm, which in turn smells faintly of hay and cowshit.⁸

While critiques of simulation and the hyperreal have proliferated in regards to audio and visual media, little attention has been devoted to the synthetic, postmodern uses of smell.⁹ The discussion usually falls into two categories: the celebratory and the cynical. While glorifying rhetoric may be brought to task for its uncritical acceptance, negative readings of smell veer close to being backhanded apologies for visual dominance. For Kevin Walsh, the use of manufactured smells foregrounds a central problematic that, in essence, pertains to the use of smells to represent at all:

The decontextualizing of smells from an historical period and placement in a twentieth-century tourist attraction seems highly dubious as each person visiting the centre will have a different perception or attitude towards a smell and it is quite likely that it will be very different from those held by the people who originally produced and lived with the smells. The problem is compounded by the fact that one begins to wonder if Victorian streets, Medieval universities and Viking villages were all steeped in the same, obviously-artificial, chemical-odour version of wet cats.¹⁰

One can certainly fault profit-oriented museums for recycling the same olfactory sensations in dissimilar contexts, but at what point does this critique emerge from a latent bias against the olfactory? And to what degree is it a circuitous defence of ocularcentrism? It is inconsistent to single out smells just because they are artificially produced (that is, mediated), or variable in interpretation, and not also critique other museum information that is mediated or variable; this would basically undermine the entire museological enterprise. The mutability of smell frustrates a quasi-authoritarian demand for the systematized deployment of 'correct' meanings and experiences. The distrust of the sensual has a long history in Western culture, a distrust which can be distilled into a contest between representational and presentational modes of information.

The argument against the use of synthesized rather than actual smells is stronger. Instead of confirming the authenticity of a certain experience, fake smells distort olfactory discrimination and sever the ability to connect odours to their natural sources.¹¹ In the search for predictable, cost-effective exhibit aromas, the disciplining and training of the senses (presumably one of the museum's goals) is sacrificed.

Smells, however, can still serve as a strategic intervention. In contrast to the highly mediated, homogenized, simplified, and commercialized use of artificial odours, the presentation of scent in a context-specific manner still holds a potential to reconfigure the museum experience. As museums shift away from basing their legitimation on master narratives and prescriptive interpretations, exhibits that include extra-visual sensory experiences grant heightened status to the subjective nature of knowledge production, and foreground experiences that are partial and uncertain. Authority and coherence are guaranteed not by collections and curatorial directives, but by each visitor's experience.¹²

Physical engagement, argues Tracy Davis, activates museum goers to 'perform' rather than 'consume' the content; that is, visitors are inserted into that indeterminate domain where they must individually negotiate the tension between the museum's framing ideology and the immediacy of personal experience.13 Disparate sensory information may not easily coincide or harmonize, and indeed may foreground difference and contradiction – effecting a museum experience that is interrogative, temporal, pluralistic.

The featuring of smells and the full range of the senses in the museum undermines visual predominance not only on a perceptual level, but on a political one as well. Countering the primacy of the visual opens up the museum to behaviours, activities, and identities that are not necessarily Western, privileged, and masculine, and which fail to produce collectible artifacts. Marginalized, private, or everyday experiences, such as those typically associated with women's domestic labour, can be given distinction and value.14

Other kinds of olfactory presences, such as those at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., provide compelling evidence that no text, image, or audio guide is able to convey. As Davis writes of the museum's pungent 'Shoe Exhibit:'

[I]ntellectual horror at an already familiar narrative of recent genocide is compounded by olfactory confirmation in a gallery where the odor of decomposing shoe leather cannot be obliterated by even the most energetic air conditioner … [T]he shoes' odor invades visitors' bodies and in so doing cements concept to experience.15

This reinvigorated form of realism, whereby volatile particles of the exhibit literally bridge the gap between artifact and visitor, operates according to Davis 'on a micro-sensory level in order to trigger a cognitive appreciation for ideas way beyond the reach of mere historical verisimilitude.'16 The fleshy smell of the shoe leather is a signifier in excess of language, one that is unexpected, unhyped. For exhibits to go beyond the visual presentation of objects, and engage with the other senses, is to venture into the dynamic realm of becoming rather than the static domain of being. (… p 272)

Notes

1 Versions of this text were presented at the 'Universities Art Association Conference', 1998, and the conference 'Uncommon Senses', 2000. I would like to thank these audiences and, in particular, Jennifer Fisher, David Howes, Constance Classen, Kim Sawchuk, and Brian Foss for their constructive feedback. Research for this text was generously supported by a SSHRC grant.

2 Quoted in Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA, and London), 1992, p 60.

3 Peter Feniak, 'What a short, odd trip it is', Globe and Mail, 10 May, 1997, A14.

4 Annmarie Adams and Helen Dyer, 'The Patch Where the Mower is King', Montreal Gazette, 27 June, 1998, J1-2. In fact, contrary to the reviewers' lament, the smell of grass was very much evident in a lawn sculpture by Mel Ziegler on the CCA's grounds.

5 Clive Bell, Art [1913], Capricorn Books [New York], 1958, pp 173, 185.

6 Kevin Walsh, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern World, Routledge (London and New York), 1992, p 101.

7 Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, trans William Weaver, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, New York, London), 1986, p 11; Jillyn Smith, Senses and Sensibilities, John Wiley & Sons (New York), 1989, p 132.

8 Alexander Wilson, 'Technological Utopias', The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 92 no 1, Winter 1993, p 169.

9 See Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, Routledge (London and New York), 1994, pp 203–5, for a discussion of smell as a postmodern sense.

10 Walsh, The Representation of the Past, pp 112–13.

11 Peter Damian and Kate Damian, Aromatherapy: Scent and Psyche, Healing Arts Press (Rochester, VT), 1995, p 130.

12 Sharon MacDonald and Roger Silverstone, 'Rewriting the Museums' Fictions: Taxonomies, Stories and Readers', Cultural Studies, vol 4 no 2, 1990, pp 176–91.

13 Tracy C Davis, 'Performing and the Real Thing in the Postmodern Museum', The Drama Review, 147, vol 39 no 3, Fall 1995, pp 15–40.

14 Gaby Porter, 'Seeing Through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums', Sharon MacDonald and Gordon Fyfe (eds), Theorizing Museums, Blackwell (Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA), 1996, pp 105–26.

15 Davis, 'Performing', The Drama Review, pp 35–6.

16 Davis, 'Performing', The Drama Review, pp 35–6.

Jim Drobnick, 'Volatile Architectures', Crime and Ornament: The Arts and Popular Culture in the Shadow of Adolf Loos, Bernie Miller and Melony Ward (eds), YYZ Books (Toronto), 2002.

(Excerpts pp 263–72)