The work encompassed working with deaf children and adults. It combines multiple arts: choreography, music, cinematography, smell, interactivity.  Hope Lost is a multisensory performance which takes a dubstep song of love and loss and translates it for the senses. The work is suitable for all audiences, disabled, able bodied, deaf, blind, young children, youth and older people.

Two deaf girls and a boy, ages 9 to 11 were coached by Charlie Grimsdale and Rachel Coppage of Giant Leap in sign – language to translate the emotions of hope, love and trust as expressed in the lyrics. The lyrics are translated by the three dancers in a whole body signing choreography which expresses mixed feelings about the engineering of the environment for industry and consumer desires as well as echoing the gestures of the children.  

The backdrop is the 3rd voice and an interactive character. The projected images show new industrial estate, new housing subdivisions and recently constructed areas of industrialised hoticulture which have consumed much of the landscape around NZ. The audience are invited to sit on the stage to experience the music viscerally through subwoofers.

The music by Mt Eden (105,281,503 hits on Youtube and recently signed by UltraMusic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt_Eden_(band) have given permission for their music to be used in the full stage performance of the work.  A sequence of smells wafts amongst the audience: cut grass, industrial odours and substitutes for the smells of nature. The fragrances were supplied by industrial perfumers Flairoma and Plant and Food Research.

Hope, Lost was performed 5 times at the InterACT Disability Festival, October 2012.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fragrant Earth references government fiscal policies, the Phillips Curve and the balance between the promise of a wage adjusted to inflation and the power to consume. The twenty three tin cans filled with fragranced soil indicate data points on the graph of the Expectations-Augmented Phillips curve which describes a relationship between inflation and unemployment.           Please see more information in my journal : http://kissingbees.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/new-work/

The data point fragrances reference D. Merrit’s poem:

‘Curious diets of the poor, down trodden and the so-called mentally ill’

Large pepsi max and big tins of tuna

Listerine and caramello chocolate

Free range eggs, oranges and heroin

Pork bones and basmati rice

Single malt whiskey with ripple cut sour cream potato chips

Hastily microwaved steak and cheese pies with bournvita

Curiously strong peppermints and 2 minute noodles

Over boiled cabbage on extra thick white bread toast

Tetrapak custard, chocolate fish and pineapple lumps

Cans of fruit salad and low alchohol beer

Fried white flour and water mix, topped with strawberry jam

Roasted mutton flap with low calorie spearmint chewing gum

Hydroponic skunk marijuana and budget tinned spaghetti

Lime flavoured dairy food and malt biscuits

Hot water, soy sauce, sugar and marmite

Badly mashed potato mixed with more badly mashed potato

Instant macaroni mix and yesterdays left over muffins

Stewed cooking apples and edible wax birthday candles.

Many thanks to Fragrances International Flavours and Fragrances ( IFF NZ), Formula Foods and Flairoma who generously supplied the fragrances

Exhibition catalogue:

http://www.satellitegallery.co.nz/images/pdf/artweek%20exhibition%20catalogue%202012.pdf

Click here to view the embedded video.

Downwind is directed towards unconscious sensing of human smell signatures by developing the human as a sensing instrument to read the ciphers of change carried by offshore winds.

The whole of nature is communicating with olfactory signals largely disregarded by humans despite their measurable effects on human behaviour and emotions.
To increase our ability to perceive the information of chemical signals not just with the nose but with the gut, it may be necessary to retrain our olfactory sense and to note the feelings and emotions that arise from olfactory materials, whether natural, synthetic or engineered.

Please find more information at KissingBees Journal

Fragrances kindly supplied by Plant and Food Research.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Flap features fifty jars with authentic human odours inside (courtesy of socks that have been well worn by New Zealanders and Canadians). With flapping lids, the jars create a variable rhythm while sporadically releasing the scents of New Zealanders and Canadians. It is what happens next, when those smells and sounds meet the senses of exhibition visitors, which interests Turner and Burgoyne most. In particular, they wonder what automatic associations each of us will experience, and what that will tell us about ourselves as New Zealanders and Canadians.

Flap combines Burgoyne’s  strengths in performance art and electronics with Raewyn Turner’s research into the as-yet unsensed human plume.
While we were making our first work, ReSense at Banff our conversation revolved around whether we could create a work using authentic human smell.  Raewyn took her socks to Plant and Food Research NZ where her smell was extracted from them using HS-SPME-GC-MS analysis. Peaks were found which indicated unknown substance as well as Butylated Hydroxytoluene (an antioxidant!)

With a focus  on developing the human as a sensing instrument, FLAP asks if we can monitor humans and the environment as we merge into a collective cyborgian version of ourselves. While the whole of nature is communicating with olfactory signals the realm of olfaction cyphers is largely uncharted despite their effects on human behavior and emotions.
FLAP explores the intimate landscape of the smells that we take for granted and provides us with a multi-sensory re-visioning of the very humble dirty sock.
Utilising traditional mechanistic devices which are activated by the audience’s shadow, and recalling the concept of archived human smells held in jars in the Stasi files, FLAP engages with the difficulty of actual preservation of the smell of humans standing on earth in 2013. We don’t yet understand how the olfactory molecule manages to affect the mind but future generations may come to understand the significance of unconscious sensing of human smell signatures and seek ways to preserve their messages.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Diana Burgoyne

BLOG Culture Smell and Sound

Review: Mark Amery. ReSense NZ Academy Fine Arts, 2011. 36-new-noises-from-the-academy

Thanks to Richard Newcomb, Plant and Food Research, NZ, CoLab NZ

Oil, Tar, wax medium on linen

Size 1300mm  x  940mm

Invisible Ships series #1

Oil, tar, wax medium on linen

size:1600mm x 1200mm

Cycle Engines #1

Oil, gold leaf, on embroidered linen

This is part of a series of works on embroidered linens.

Size 1370mm x 1500mm

oil and wax medium on unstretchered linen

size: 930mm x 1200mm

diptych.

oil, tar on linen

Each panel 780 mm x 1900 mm

Whole painting 1560 ( plus 10cm gap between)  x  1900

Diptych.

oil, tar on linen

Each panel 780 mm x 1900 mm

Whole painting 1560 ( plus 10cm gap between)  x  1900