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Smell ghost stories around the fire in the sweater that smells like smoke
Taste your 9th birthday party in that cheap grocery store cake
see your mother's favourite painting in a sunrise over a mountain
Feel A harrowing toboggan ride with your dad when the cold air hits your nose
Hear A foggy morning at the cottage in the loon call at the beginning of a song
close your eyes
This sound, the infamous call of the Canadian loon, is where this project started.
My connection to this sound and animal feels so innate that I wanted to explore how these connections between sensory input and memory are formed so strongly.
Research shows that after being processed in the thalamus, most of the information gathered by our senses is stored in the hippocampus and amygdala (responsible for memory and emotion). But specific types of sensory information such as smell bypass the thalamus and go straight to the olfactory bulb (smell center of the brain directly connected to these memory and emotion centers).
These connections in our brains are survival tactics strengthened by evolution. It makes sense for your brain to remind you with vivid detail that "The last time you ate something that smelled like that, you got sick" or "The last time you heard voices like that you were safe". Your senses keep you alive.
prototyping
All of our senses are stacked on top of one another to create detailed experiential memories. They fill in the spaces left by the others. By isolating one sense and dulling the others, we can flood the brain with a singular source of information which creates a deep and unique experience of a place or time.
Final iterations made from felt and yarn
These final iterations of the sensory inhibitors were taken out into the world. To places new and places known in hopes to see what else there is to see, or smell, or hear.
I encourage you next time you find yourself on your favourite bench by the water or on a busy bus on the way to work.
Close your eyes.
Maybe even close your ears.
And see what else there is to see.
the scents, sounds, and sights of Trout Lake
The sensory inhibitors all rolled up and tucked in their laminated carrying rings
