Created with Aran Dasan and first shown at Electromagnetic Field 2024, Aro-matic is a scent organ which blends and creates cocktails of aromas.
We had a lot of fun working together on Aro-matic and imagining a Solarpunk design future. Creating sustainable and optimistic view of a future where humanity, technology and nature exist in harmony.
My main contributions were the visual language, the form and structure, the physical design and making. There was a lot of computational design with Rhino Grasshopper to generate the nodes for the frame and the 3 organic shells that house the electronics and the bell.
Aro-matic combines technology and plant biology to create a science fiction future that might possibly exist one day….
“The Scent Organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio – rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar, and new mown hay… back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was a round of applause.”
from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
Ellen Rowland, a qualified aromatherapist and author of “The Healing Power of Scent”, provided the magic for the scents that are at the core of this bio-machine.
We will be updating this page with more details, and some videos soon.