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H. Deng
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Microbial Smellscapes
Tuning into Blooming Futures through Design
Microbial Smellscapes: Tuning into Blooming Futures through Design investigates how design can support people in noticing and experiencing future microbial smellscapes in the present. Situated within the context of harmful algal blooms and microbial change in everyday water environments, the project approaches smell as an unstable, situated, and more-than-human form of environmental experience. Rather than communicating microbial change only through scientific data, visual warnings, or technological sensing, the research explores how olfactory and speculative design can make ecological transformation more bodily, affective, and open to collective discussion.
Following a Research through Design approach, the project developed through the interconnected phases of attuning, speculating, and materialising, with making, reflection, and synthesis occurring across the research process. Contextual research, expert input, situated smellwalks, participatory speculation, and material speculation informed the development of a speculative olfactory design set consisting of a wearable smell probe, a walking and reflection zine, and a small archive of microbial-inspired smell references.
The wearable probe uses GPS-based triggering to release subtle, bloom-like smells during situated walking encounters. Publicly available water-monitoring information and local ecological knowledge informed the selection and interpretation of the locations, but the probe does not claim to reproduce or diagnose their actual ecological conditions. The zine supports noticing, imagining, and reflection, while the smell archive brings together scent references associated with past, present, and speculative future water conditions.
The project does not aim to detect, explain, or solve harmful algal blooms. Instead, it creates conditions for situated smellscape attunement. By bringing speculative microbial smells close to the body and into encounters with familiar waters, the design invites people to pause, sense, question, and reflect on their relationships with changing aquatic environments. In doing so, the project demonstrates how design can tune attention towards ecological transformations that often remain difficult to perceive. ...
Following a Research through Design approach, the project developed through the interconnected phases of attuning, speculating, and materialising, with making, reflection, and synthesis occurring across the research process. Contextual research, expert input, situated smellwalks, participatory speculation, and material speculation informed the development of a speculative olfactory design set consisting of a wearable smell probe, a walking and reflection zine, and a small archive of microbial-inspired smell references.
The wearable probe uses GPS-based triggering to release subtle, bloom-like smells during situated walking encounters. Publicly available water-monitoring information and local ecological knowledge informed the selection and interpretation of the locations, but the probe does not claim to reproduce or diagnose their actual ecological conditions. The zine supports noticing, imagining, and reflection, while the smell archive brings together scent references associated with past, present, and speculative future water conditions.
The project does not aim to detect, explain, or solve harmful algal blooms. Instead, it creates conditions for situated smellscape attunement. By bringing speculative microbial smells close to the body and into encounters with familiar waters, the design invites people to pause, sense, question, and reflect on their relationships with changing aquatic environments. In doing so, the project demonstrates how design can tune attention towards ecological transformations that often remain difficult to perceive. ...
Microbial Smellscapes: Tuning into Blooming Futures through Design investigates how design can support people in noticing and experiencing future microbial smellscapes in the present. Situated within the context of harmful algal blooms and microbial change in everyday water environments, the project approaches smell as an unstable, situated, and more-than-human form of environmental experience. Rather than communicating microbial change only through scientific data, visual warnings, or technological sensing, the research explores how olfactory and speculative design can make ecological transformation more bodily, affective, and open to collective discussion.
Following a Research through Design approach, the project developed through the interconnected phases of attuning, speculating, and materialising, with making, reflection, and synthesis occurring across the research process. Contextual research, expert input, situated smellwalks, participatory speculation, and material speculation informed the development of a speculative olfactory design set consisting of a wearable smell probe, a walking and reflection zine, and a small archive of microbial-inspired smell references.
The wearable probe uses GPS-based triggering to release subtle, bloom-like smells during situated walking encounters. Publicly available water-monitoring information and local ecological knowledge informed the selection and interpretation of the locations, but the probe does not claim to reproduce or diagnose their actual ecological conditions. The zine supports noticing, imagining, and reflection, while the smell archive brings together scent references associated with past, present, and speculative future water conditions.
The project does not aim to detect, explain, or solve harmful algal blooms. Instead, it creates conditions for situated smellscape attunement. By bringing speculative microbial smells close to the body and into encounters with familiar waters, the design invites people to pause, sense, question, and reflect on their relationships with changing aquatic environments. In doing so, the project demonstrates how design can tune attention towards ecological transformations that often remain difficult to perceive.
Following a Research through Design approach, the project developed through the interconnected phases of attuning, speculating, and materialising, with making, reflection, and synthesis occurring across the research process. Contextual research, expert input, situated smellwalks, participatory speculation, and material speculation informed the development of a speculative olfactory design set consisting of a wearable smell probe, a walking and reflection zine, and a small archive of microbial-inspired smell references.
The wearable probe uses GPS-based triggering to release subtle, bloom-like smells during situated walking encounters. Publicly available water-monitoring information and local ecological knowledge informed the selection and interpretation of the locations, but the probe does not claim to reproduce or diagnose their actual ecological conditions. The zine supports noticing, imagining, and reflection, while the smell archive brings together scent references associated with past, present, and speculative future water conditions.
The project does not aim to detect, explain, or solve harmful algal blooms. Instead, it creates conditions for situated smellscape attunement. By bringing speculative microbial smells close to the body and into encounters with familiar waters, the design invites people to pause, sense, question, and reflect on their relationships with changing aquatic environments. In doing so, the project demonstrates how design can tune attention towards ecological transformations that often remain difficult to perceive.