SMDB - Made in collaboration with Speculative Architecture
As part of Forever, MOD Adelaide
14th Jan – Nov 2025.
If you think of memory storage in our current time, a database may come to mind, the intangible cloud which we have started to dump our life work and memories into. Somewhere in the world there are machines which are storing this information, data storage and servers in enormous rooms, shelves and cabinets full, like a huge communal brain. This artwork might be a single brain, or even just a day in a single brain, scent experience stored in horizontal shelving like precious archival objects.
There are evocative connections between scent and memory that are readily shared amongst friends and family – cut grass, a teacher’s perfume, sunscreen at the beach – along with recent studies to understand the neural pathways associated with memory and their potential benefits. For individuals the experience of scents triggering memories can be slippery, the feeling abstract. There is a playfulness in this that can excite reflective thoughts and prompt scientific inquiry into how we think our minds are thinking.
This is the Scent Memory Data Base, storing various scents to be periodically released during the exhibition. Rather than being accessed by ethernet cables or an instruction to tell you what to think, you are encouraged to allow your nose to make the connections with your mind and memories. It is a place to consider how our scent memories have been formed in the past and how new triggers may be created.
– MOD wall didactic
