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I BO OK

I BO OK was an exhibition installation shown at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art (2008) and the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2009). The work was developed from a Scottish Arts Council Artists Award in 2008-2009. ‘I BO OK’ was one of a series of 5 new major pieces produced as part of the award, all of which explored the incorporation of olfactory elements within visual art with a performative dimension. The other works in the series, illustrated in the supporting PDF, are: ‘Ghost’, Tatton Park Biennial, Knutsford (2010); ‘Five + One’, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts, 2010; ‘Museum of Gloves’, Vestiges Park, commissioned through Low Salt for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2010); Birch Bitch, Nomi’s Kitchen, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2010). ‘I BO OK’ carries further my long-standing interest in the non-visual senses within visual arts practice. This poses an interesting challenge to a discipline that very often exists to do the opposite, to privilege the visual above all other aspects. ‘I BO OK’ was a sound and scent piece for three laptops, inspired by my discovery that the model of a Macbook I inherited from work had a body odour. The research consisted of looking on Apple chatrooms where I found many owners of the model had similar problems and were very stressed out and embarrassed by their human-odoured laptops. I produced a scripted soundpiece for the laptop voices based upon chatroom conversations and by doing so animated ubiquitous technology with scent and a ‘technological’ recognition of scent. The research inquiry for the series of work was shared at the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design Annual Conference in 2008.