ITERATION
Many are the projects that would need more time, more critique and more feedback. From one of my very first interactive projects: a coat hanger where you would hang life size portraits of people, to my college thesis that still is missing smells, to the last project i did for Rome which would need the last iteration.
Right now I am a little split between these 2 and by Monday i will figure out which one I plan on taking on first:
1. As an artist I have always be interested in memories. Their significance, their emotional impact, their vividness, their lies, their interpretation. Researching a few years back, for a piece that centered around the experience of exile, i came to the conclusion that smells are the fastest triggers of memories and remembrance, as they act so immediately and without a conscious filter to bring us back to the exact moment and place that smell was experienced. The fascination, for me, is that the same smell can bring so many people to different times and dimensions and because of that i think the term 'interactive' takes a whole new meaning and form. It's no longer a path, a planned out journey for the 'user' but a personal and secret one, set up by the artist who has no control over the actual result. I want to deepen my research on smells and finally actually manage to compile a few key smells and user test them.
2. In Rome I proposed the idea of using the famous manholes all over the city, that most tourists and residents are familiar with, as a new way to navigate the city by assigning them a toll free number that once called would give useful information such as directions to attractions, restaurants, cafe's and the location of the nearest taxi stand. This was a way to help tourists not to get lost in Rome as well as raising awareness of the malfunctions and poor-maintainence of these italian design/architectural icons. What i would need to do right now is to find the right type of sticker, print it, apply it and purchase a toll free number to see if the great response i received in Rome would actually turn into the desired result.