Scents and Sonics of The Ocean: Multisensorial traces of lost and recovered memories of Sapelo Island
With Yosh Han, Malte Leander, Julia Kubanek, and Ocean Memory Project
With special thanks to Benton Jacob
Jan. 20 – Feb. 02, 2024
IAO Gallery is pleased to present Scents and Sonics of The Ocean, a project bringing together a perfumer, a sound artist, and a team of scientists to explore the sounds and scents of coastal Sapelo Island.
The chemical structures of the scent molecules, via their spectroscopic signatures, became the building blocks for soundscapes of lost and recovered ocean memory: the result is a multisensorial installation that invites the public to learn from, and explore, the intersection of science, scent, and sound.
Ocean Memory is a concept born in 2016 at a transdisciplinary conference of the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering devoted to the Mesopelagic (or deep ocean). Ocean Memory Project seeks to bring together growing collaborative network of over 100 researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines and cultural backgrounds, from oceanography to neuroscience, to visual art, to theater, to sonification, to history, to philosophy, to journalism, researchers from across disciplines in science, the humanities and the arts, as well as from diverse cultures, dedicated to exploring the intersection of Ocean and Memory. The common goal is to advance Ocean Memory as a new field of scholarship and creative expression to explore and develop this question through a trans-disciplinary lens.
This project is funded in part by Ocean Memory Project through a grant from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative NAKFI-CA01.
*The human history of Sapelo Island, Georgia, dates back more than 4000 years to indigenous communities harvesting food from estuaries and modifying the landscape with fire and farming. The coastal sands and marshes have shifted over time, burying former settlements as the beach rolls over the marshes. In the early 1800s, enslaved Black people were forcibly brought to Sapelo Island to farm plantations of sugar cane and other crops. After the Civil War, Black residents established settlements around the island, defining the Gullah-Geechee culture of the lowcountry. Most descendants now live off-island, with only twenty-nine currently living full-time on Sapelo, preserving their legacy of working the land and sea, and supporting their community. The forests, marshes, and coastal waters of Sapelo Island are the ecological foundation of this unique locale.
Opening + Artist Talk: January 20, 2024
Closing Event: February 2, 2024
The Institute for Art and Olfaction Gallery
932 Chung King Road, LA CA 90012
PHOTOS FROM OPENING
ARTISTS
MALTE LEANDER
Multidisciplinary Artist, Composer
Malte Leander (he/him) is a Swedish-French multidisciplinary creator and artist currently residing in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. As an artist, his primary art form is with audio and music, often leaning into musique concrete and soundscape composition techniques, often reflecting upon ecological topics such as urban noise pollution, sustainable sonic practices and acoustic ecology. He also combines his compositional practice with experimental analogue video production and DIY-electronics. Malte also works in a wide range of facilitation roles, most notably as a host and producer for a number of podcast- and radio projects, but also in different types of contexts within event production and programming coordination. His various experiences as a multidisciplinary artist tends to work in his favor, working closely with artists and their processes.
Website
JULIA KUBANEK
Professor, Researcher, Scientific Author
Julia Kubanek is a Professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research explores how marine organisms rely on chemical cues to exchange information, locate appropriate habitat, recognize mates, track down food, and avoid predators. For example, prey such as small crabs and juvenile oysters recognize the odors of larger predatory crabs and fish through the chemistry of predator urine, hiding when danger is detected or growing a strong shell. Offshore, microscopic algae, crustaceans, and other microbes navigate a largely featureless landscape of ocean water, encountering each other’s scent trails. The algal prey of copepods take advantage of these inevitable scents to assess risk of predation, upregulating their own defenses which include toxin production, bioluminescence, and splitting apart from other algal cells to evade detection by copepods. The exchange of information in this watery medium is almost entirely chemical, and animals have evolved numerous forms of sensory perception to pick up on dilute and unusual but natural chemical cues. In field studies and in her lab at Georgia Tech, Julia and her students explore the chemical structures and ecological functions of chemical cues in the ocean. Julia is an eager hiker, aspiring yogi, and longtime SCUBA diver living in Atlanta, Georgia.
Website
YOSH HAN
Perfumer, USCG 25T Captain
Yosh Han is the founder of YOSH olfactory sense. She is a nose, level 1 Sommelier and former tasting judge for the International Chocolate Salon in San Francisco and occasional judge for the Art and Olfaction Awards in Los Angeles. While she loves to teach and speak about fragrance and flavors, she enjoys creative collaborations with other artists in these fields. She is currently a Creative in Residence at The Battery in San Francisco. As an entrepreneur with 28 years experience in the Flavor and Fragrance industry, Yosh serves on the Advisory Board for other beauty and beverage brands. She is the producer of Scent Festival, a platform on Intersectionality and Perfumery that showcases indie perfumers and gives voice to POC artists. She speaks on the need to Decolonize Scent and update the Amber (formerly known as “Oriental”) category. Yosh is the Creative Director for Scent Trunk, a fragrance publishing house that commissions Independent Perfumers to create annual fragrance collections inspired by seasonal focus ingredients, geographic provenance of the highlighted material, and matching color palette. Yosh is an avid sailor, racer and underwater diver. She is a licensed USCG 25T Captain, former PADI Scuba Instructor and open water swimmer. She’s sailed 20,000NM on the High Seas.
Website