The scent in the machine
Timeline
2023 - 2024
MFA Thesis
Processing, Figma, Java, Arduino, olfaction, wax casting, electronic hardware
Shows
ArtCenter Grad Show, Print Pomona, Hauser & Wirth, Printed Matter
About
A speculative proposal of embedding our artificially intelligent machines with traces of the humans that inevitably fall in the loop of automation.
The ways scent
delivers us back to our bodies,
underscores liveness,
lingers and transports,
allows it to carry information differently than visual signal.
In this, scent resists reduction. How else, can the presence of their work be made known?
Brief
How can AI-driven interactions be embedded with the contexts from which training data is sourced?
A vast workforce of over a million workers, primarily consisting of data labelers in the global south earning $1 per hour label datasets for AI models.
Outcomes
Project components
Interactive desktop story
Click through story-game built in Processing, activating scents and sculptures with clicks and key inputs.
Network sniffer
An anonymized, de-identified packet sniffer (built with Carnivore) built in Processing, the live network atomizer marks the atmospherics of our networks in real time through our online activity. Our information transfer, scented.
Blended scents and custom atomizers
Formulated scents based on Ghost Work and hand-made vessels and atomizer system connected to click-through story.
Wax gears
Motorized ephemeral cast wax sculptures.
Prototyping and Testing
How can I build speculative sites where algorithmic labour seeps through in our every day digital platforms?
An exploration in materializing the invisible, the Network Sniffer is built in Processing with Java using the Carnivore library. In the interactive story, prompts arise when fields are entered, provoking moments between the instantaneous where signals of turk labor could arise.
Self Publishing
Hand made printed matter shown and sold at the Print Pomona Art Book Fair (PPABF) and Hauser + Wirth’s independent publishing market.
Materials Research and Follow-up
Scent secretes and oozes, evading discrete starts and ends, marking the constant running (working) processes, often invisible, bridging and communicating the invisible background actors.
