Smells Like Modern Art: Six Scents Series Two

What cognitive psychology has to do with experimental film and the smell of roses.

At their most compelling, the creative arts go deeper than the aesthetic brilliance of a beautiful painting or the auditory indulgence of a superb sonata. They explore the boundaries of our perception and the intersection of our senses, our emotions and our intellect. And we don’t normally think of fragrance or the olfactory world as a typical playground of such ambitious art. But experimental project Six Scents is working hard to challenge this assumption.

Six Scents explores the relationship between artist and nature through a collection of fragrances, stories, films, art and photography.

Every year, Six Scents invites six prominent artists to create a series of fragrances for six of the world’s greatest parfumers, with the goal of raising awareness for a chosen charity.

Series Two, this year’s edition, includes three experimental short films, each capturing the stories behind all six fragrances on multiple and very different levels.

Flashback by Marco Brambilla explores the notion of memory through a conceptual collage, creating a kinetic video canvas out of iconographic images in a play on human emotion and cognitive psychology.

Subliminal by Justin Edward John Smith and Alessandro Tinelli captures the emotion and character each fragrance embodies, and how these characters interact with their unique environments.

Contact by Azuma Makoto reflects on the creation of scents and the beauty of the moment through a slow, surreal journey into the materials — roses, dirt, leather, wood, soil, bone — used in making each fragrance.

This year, the effort benefits Pro Natura — an international nonprofit aiming to conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate change by combating poverty, an underlying social and economic trigger for these issues.

Explore Six Scents and immerse yourself in this eerie world of sensory cross-pollination and postmodern creativity.

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Instant Classic: Whole Earth Discipline

Ecopragmatism, or how to stop doing what we’re doing in order to avoid going where we’re going.

Between 1968 and 1972, author and activist Stewart Brand, who helped start the environmental movement in the 60’s, published the highly acclaimed Whole Earth Catalog — an iconic counterculture compendium of tools, texts and miscellaneous information, which Steve Jobs went on to describe as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web.

Today, appropriately coinciding with Blog Action Day, Brand releases his long-awaited new book — Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, a sharp and compelling vision for engineering our collective future.

Brand, who has always approached environmental and technological challenges as a solvable design problems, offers radical yet viable ideas for managing Earth’s global-scale natural infrastructure in the least intrusive, most respectful but efficient manner possible.

The book tackles three of today’s most profound transformations — climate change, urbanization and biotechnology — in a way that’s part practical guide to damage control, part prescriptive inspiration for a more efficient society, part bold anthem of design-thinking. And if Brand’s track record is any sign at all, Whole Earth Discipline may well become one of the (counter)cultural classics of our generation.

Meanwhile, catch a preview of the book as Brand busts several environmental myths in his latest, fascinating TED talk at the US State Department.

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Urban Storytelling: Hitotoki

The hidden whimsy of cities, or what Parisian gardens have to do with the Tokyo subway.

We’ve always been fascinated by cities — they are living organisms whose narrative is constantly evolving. Which is why we love Hitotoki — a rather unorthodox exploration of the highly subjective cultural footprints of cities, creating a narrative map of the world.

Hitotoki is an online literary project collecting stories of singular experiences tied to locations in cities worldwide

The Japanese word Hitotoki connotes any brief, singular stretch of time. It’s roughly translated as “moment” and is comprised of two components: hito, “one,” and toki, “time.” Which perfectly captures the project’s ephemeral yet timeless quality as an anthology of vibes.

Started in 2007 as a collaboration between Tokyo design group AQ and Tokyo/Seattle-based indie publisher Chin Music Press, the project embodies that wonderful cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines that we believe is the driving force behind true innovation. Today, Hitotoki spans six cultural epicenters — Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, and our hometown of Sofia. (It’s okay, we’ll save you some Googling — that’s in Bulgaria, which is not to be confused with Bolivia or Botswana or any of the other surprisingly misguided geographic guesses people make, and is actually in Europe.)

Beautifully designed and encrusted with superb typographic art direction, Hitotoki is a conceptual, aesthetic and cultural indulgence like no other. Be a part of this incredible project by submitting your own story about one of the existing cities, or by applying to be an editor for a brand new city.

Meanwhile, explore Hitotoki‘s fascinating literary landscapes — whether or not you’re familiar with the city itself, these rich, vicarious experiences unravel a new whimsical world you never thought existed behind the concrete reality of the big city.

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Journalism Redefined: The Photographer

A photographer, a graphic novel, and the remarkable story behind the headlines.

As we observe the eighth anniversary of Afghanistan’s latest occupation, the world would do well to reflect on the history that brought us to this most recent impasse. That complex history deserves a fittingly complex treatment, which it gets in the genre-breaking masterwork The Photographer.

First published in 2003 in French, The Photographer was reissued in English this year. Melding a graphic novel, photo essay, and travelogue, it tells the story of photographer Didier Lefèvre’s journey through Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Lefèvre documented the group’s harrowing covert tour in 1986 from Pakistan into a nation gripped by violence in the aftermath of the 1979 Soviet invasion. While a few of his 4,000-plus images were published upon his return to France, years passed before Lefèvre was approached by his friend, graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert, about collaborating on a book that would finally tell his remarkable story.

The resulting effort, assembled by graphic designer Frédéric Lemercier, is a seamless tour de force of reportage unlike anything else in modern journalism. Through hybrid forms of history, The Photographer tells one tale of what is of course an ongoing narrative in a part of the world we usually hear about in abstract headlines. We were moved by the courage and strength of the Afghani people and the MSF doctors who risk their lives to help them under exceedingly difficult conditions, especially the team’s young, female head of mission. Although we know how this particular piece of the story works out—against long odds Lefèvre makes it back to his native France, and MSF will stay until forced to abandon its operations temporarily in 1990—that does nothing to diminish the book’s suspense.

The Photographer is a true hybrid of artistic approaches. Frames of photos run in succession to provide parallax views of a scene, and Lemercier’s coloration of the drawn panels enhances the immediacy of the experience. (The Persian script in several scenes was even penned by Persepolis artist/author Marjane Satrapi.) Moved along by interwoven panels of photography and illustration, we were completely absorbed by the action and had to be pulled away to tell you about it.

For a singular storytelling experience, let The Photographer take you on a trip through time to a place we still need to understand better.

Kirstin Butler has a Bachelor’s in art & architectural history and a Master’s in public policy from Harvard University. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn as a freelance editor and researcher, where she also spends way too much time on Twitter. For more of her thoughts, check out her videoblog.

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