New Research // Petrichor

Hallo!

It is time for me to start a new odor research. I thought it was a shame to create a new blog every time I start a new project so I'm going to pack my smell tasks all under "dailyodors". 

Dailyodors was the name I gave to the previous work which consisted in how odor affects our personal live, but in general terms what interests me the most is to research the ways how odor affects our visual perception. 

For the next project I am working on, I would like to extract odors from the 4th elements in the earth: air, water, fire and earth. 

Step by step, I will start with earth. Probably as many of you out there, I'm captivated by the smell of earth after the rain, also, not just earth, but how any pavement smells like at that moment. It seems this smell is a mixture of ozone, the spores of the bacteria actinomycetes and other vegetal components we might find in the soil. This smell has a beautiful name, many people called it Petrichor.

"Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɨkɔər/) is the scent of rain on dry earth, or the scent of dust after rain. The word is constructed from Greek, petros, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology. It is defined as "the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a long warm dry spell"".

Extracted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

Visual

Final Score for Synthesis.

Graphic Instructions for Sysnthesis.

Provisional Odor Score for my piece Synthesis.

Odor Dispenser

Besides all the odor experiments based on hygene habits, how to make my own smells for the piece, etc I have also developed my own Odor dispenser. It was ready on April 2013 and I used it for the first time for an audience during the Spheres graduation preview exhibition on May 2013.

I've designed a very simple machine made out of two medical apparatus used for people who has breathing issues. I have almost total control of them with Arduino and the software designed for it. 

If you are interested in knowing further details of this mechanism I'd appreciate you contact me at:  barrufetaclara@gmail.com

I'm up for collaborations!

Eau de sueur

Hola,

My research didn't stop! 

Last week I presented, at the Spheres exhibition (preview of graduation works by ArtScience), the first prototype of "Synthesis", the audio-odor-visual piece I'm making research for and that gave me enough input to continue. However, I will write about the components of my piece later on. For now, I will explain how my odor donations experiment proceeded.

1. Few weeks ago I gave some donation odor kits to my volunteers (you can see wool and silk textile sealed in plastic bags after being used).

2. I got them back impregnate with the volunteers arm pit sweat.

3. I build my own distiller: it's very simple!! You need a pressure pot, a silicone hose and another pot with cold water.

4. I introduced the wool textile impregnated with sweat inside the pressure pot with some water. Then you have to wait till the pot starts to realize vapor, which will be condensed trough the silicone hose.

5. You've got some water with odor as a result:  Eau de sueur.

skull & sweat odor

Those are the next steps for my odor research!
I'm working on extracting different body odors, directly from my body. However, I think it would be very interesting if someone else would like to extract some of your smell! Would be someone up for it? It's quite simple, that's what I would need from you:

1. Skull odor: I will give you 10 silk or wool textile patches which you would need to scrach your head every day for a week and keep them in a sealed plastic bag. For that I would need you to don't wash your hair for that week. Also not use any perfume.

and/or

2. Sweat odor: do you do any sports? Or are you up for a run? I will give you some textiles to put around your armpits and a sealed plastic bag. The only thing you need to do is sweat a bit while your are wearing the textiles and afterwards just put them on the plastic bag and close it. We could do this run in a little group if more than one would like to!

Please send a mail to barrufetaclara@gmail.com if you are interested on donating your odor.

No Perfume

The next step on my dailyodors experiments is to extract my own body odor. Therefore, I started to use the products on the picture, Shampoo and Shower Gel without Perfume, so when I try to collect my sweat I make sure it is not influenced by other odors. I'm using them for a week now. Actually, it's amazing to don't be walking around with some random coco, almond, flowerish fragance on my skin.

The Urtekram Shower Gel ingridients are:

Aqua, glycerin, cocamidopropyl betaine, alcohol, sodium coco-sulfate, glyceryl caprylate, coco-glucoside, sodium cocoyl glutamate, sodium chloride, citric acid and tocopheryl acetate.

The Urtekram Shampoo ingridients are:

Aqua, glycerin, coco-glucoside, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodiu coco-sulfate, alcohol, glyceril caprylate, glyceril oleate, sodium cocoyl glutamate and citric acid.

General chemical structure of a paraben
(a para-hydroxybenzoate)
where R = an alkyl group.
Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraben 

As you can read in the ingridients list these two products are parabens free. I decided for it because its seems parabens (regulary used as a cosmetic preservative) have the hability to slightly mimic strogen which might influence directly on our body odor (besides, probably, influence brest cancer and possibly generating early puverty in females).

Anyone out there who already extracted their own odor before? Tips are very welcome!