Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Leeds : B - Performance and the Cultural industries
The Smell of Envy
This practice-led submission centres on a new performance work titled The Smell of Envy, developed as part of the research project ‘Site and Smell: an immersive performance of olfactory-spatial memory’. This £30K project was funded by the Wellcome Trust Arts Awards in the Engaging Science grants programme. The project involved collaboration with partners Pigeon Theatre (a Manchester-based experimental performance company), Dale-Air (a Greater Manchester-based scent manufacturer), and Dr Colin Lever (a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Durham). The project interrogates the neuroscience and psychology of spatial and olfactory memory, exploring how smell links to our processes of long-term memory formation, specifically our memories of space or site. Methodologically the project interviewed 50 volunteer participants about their site/smell autobiographical memories, which fed into a performance with smell-scape. The project: disseminated current thinking re smell/site/memory to new audiences; designed ways of using smell-scapes in performance; through adaptations of cognitive neuroscientific experimental techniques created innovative performance making strategies; established methodologies for the engagement of performance makers and scientists in effective iterative, creative collaboration.
The portfolio evidences the research process and its performance outcomes through video documentation and stills and offers a written articulation of the research problems and subsequent insights through a complementary presentation, a theoretical contextual map and accompanying performance writings. The project produced increased knowledge and insights of (i) the relationships between performance makers, performance academics and scientists in the context of the collaborative performance research laboratory; (ii) innovative stage practice for performance incorporating smell-scapes; (iii) the relationship between smell, site and memory in the formation of individual identity.
Outputs - 10 performances between Feb-May 2013: Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton; Peninsula Arts, Plymouth; Performing House, York; Axis Arts Centre, Crewe; stage@leeds, Leeds; Z-Arts, Manchester; UCLAN, Preston; Mumford Theatre, Cambridge; Capstone Theatre, Liverpool; the Wellcome Collection, London. 1 conference paper (IFTR, Chile).
