‘Unscentsored’ by Ellen Huynh
BA (Hons) Graphics and Communications Design (2019 - 2021)
Central Saint Martin, UAL, London
Key supervisors: Abbie Vickeress
Despite smell being the most important and first developed sense, it is usually ignored and overruled by our visual counterpart. However, due to the current events, smell has been more valued due to its loss when contracting the Coronavirus. So, what if we were to lose one of our other senses or were not able to use all our senses at once?
Unscentsored explores this problem, with the role of the designer as a translator of the smells into sight and touch. By distilling and collecting condensation from boiling materials, such as coffee and basil, friends and family were asked to describe the discoloured liquids placed in spray bottles. With these abstract descriptions, plaster sculptures were made to represent the characteristics of the scents and give smell a visual platform.
Monotoned in colour, users are encouraged to really look the sculpture. This is reflected also in the spray bottles with the scents of which are transparent to enhance the experience of smelling. Thus, without the sculpture or the scent, the user is restricted to one sense of either sight or smell. Due to their ambiguity, the sculptures also act as a catalyst for a conversation derive about smell and its importance.
Our ways of ‘seeing’ extend more than that of our sight, as John Berger notes, something of which is commonly lost within the mundane ways of life. The project aims to develop the user’s sense of smell, to embrace the familiar settings in a different perspective. It aims to train such an undeveloped sense to enable one to the beauty of the everyday and to enhance life itself, just as the situationists once did.
Ellen Huynh / BA (Hons) Graphics and Communications Design, UAL (2019 - 2021)
Currently a student, I drive on creating and experimenting constantly to push the boundaries of the role of a designer. With a love for, but not limited to, ceramics and photography, I aim for my practice to incorporate my other interests to enhance design in its most optimised form.
Derive, Sculpture, Smell, Senses, Minimalism
