We're playing those mind games together,Pushing the barrier, planting seed.Playing the mind guerrilla,Catching the mantra "peace on earth".We all been playing those mind games forever,Some kind of Druid dude, lifting the veil.Doing the mind guerrilla,Some call it magic, the search for the grail.
Monday, April 22, 2024
Falco Riot and Octyl Fora Go Missing
Monday, April 1, 2024
Scent in Film: The Scent of Earth by Amit Dutta
Scene in an Indian perfume shop from The Scent of Earth, a short film by Amit Dutta (2021). The film captures the essence of episodic memory. |
The Scent of Earth by Amit Dutta utilizes stop-motion animation to explore the smell of rain on parched earth at the start of India’s monsoon rain. The narrator in the film articulates encounters with the aroma in childhood memory vignettes that reawaken and crystalize when he discovers a flask of mitti attar ("earth perfume") at a bazaar by chance. The essence, a codistillation of earthen pottery and sandalwood, is imbued with the scent of the landscape and a history of encounter with a centuries-old style of perfumery.
Smells, as an experience, aren't permission based. They are perceived as the autonomic result of breathing. We neurologically detect smells before we can describe them and it happens in a flash. Molecules that comprise smells make physical contact with olfactory receptors, generating memories and emotions before they can be expressed as language. James McHugh captures the liminal quality of smell when he writes: "Smell has the strange, almost paradoxical, nature of being both a remote sense and a contact sense."
Amit Dutta brings a clear understanding of the embodied aspect of smell throughout The Scent of Earth. The voice and storytelling style of the narrator (it’s the filmmaker's) are gentle, relaxed and guileless. This makes the portrayal of smell relatable to anyone who’s ever experienced a meaningful scent in all its timeless profundity. Mitti attar is the catalyst for awakening memory and inspiring storytelling, which in turn touches on the art of perfume making in Kannauj. It’s a thoughtful admixture of scent, culture and film.
Mitti kulhad (earth cups) made from unfinished clay are fired in a kiln, broken into shards, and used to make mitti attar. Whole cups, which are designed for drinking tea, impart an earthy flavor. |
Viewers experience the transporting quality of smells through the speaker’s visual and articulated memories as they follow the narrative arc of the film. The script has a literary flavor when extracted from the film, which is just over two minutes long:
"In my childhood, one smell that affected me the most was the scent of the earth when it rained for the first time after a hot summer. The smell was so subtle that sometimes I wondered if it existed at all.
Everybody felt it, but no one ever expressed it. It was difficult to articulate that scent. I did not pay much attention to it and eventually forgot about it.
Many years later, in a small bazaar, I saw a small bottle of perfume. The label was in Hindi and it said ‘Earth Perfume'. It made me curious when I smelled it; it was exactly the same smell that I experienced in my childhood.
With it, memories of my childhood also came back, not as one particular incident, but as various assorted images. I saw myself going back to school in a horse-cart, my mother teaching at the same school, the school that was close to the border.
There were a few destroyed tanks and bunkers, reminiscent of old wars. The broken tanks and bunkers had gathered dust, colorful flowers grew on them. Rain fell on those flowers and gave out the same scent.
The shopkeeper told me that this scent was made in Kannauj, where they have been making it for centuries. What fascinated me was the scent, which I even failed to spell out, was experienced by someone in ancient India, who tried to capture it and succeeded!
I bought that bottle, and with it my childhood—in a small bottle."
The duality of terrestrial experience (the smell of rain on parched earth) and the ability to distill the terrestrial (sandalwood and shards of fired earthen clay) bookend the narrator's sense of wonder at the close of the film. The Scent of Earth is a filmic ode to its namesake. What we are left with is proof that the extraordinary can be found in something as ordinary as dry earth that crumbles between the fingers like dust, and smells of the heavens in the rain.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Algorithm This: A Math of the Senses
Untitled (c.1980) ©Paulina Peavey Estate / Andrew Eldin Gallery, NYC |
Monday, March 18, 2024
The Scent of Morphia and Confabulation
Stripped Cat by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1924) |
Our story begins and nearly ends for a cat, introducing us to its peculiar owner and an unsavory trick he played on the feline with the express purpose of ending its life. Consider the following four points before engaging with the tale:
- № 1: Cats. They’re an interesting subject because they’re cats. And they let you know it.
- № 2: People. Always hiding behind the mask of personality. Some are more convincing than others.
- № 3: Writers. They’re observant and take notes. Make acquaintance with one and you may appear as a character in one of their stories.
- № 4: Doctors. Most are guided by the Hippocratic Oath. Others are gilded by reputation, clever accountants and club memberships.
I HAD a favourite cat which was having fits and becoming dangerous, so, to destroy it as painlessly as possible, I inserted several grains of morphia in the centre of a piece of foie gras which was cut in two, great care being taken that no morphia was split on the outside. The cat on being shown the foie gras expressed in every way its eagerness for it, but when it got within three feet of the foie gras, turned round and looked at me with intense astonishment, and then after another sniff walked away, though previously it had always worried for a small piece. The special point is that the cat could detect something dangerous though the strong smell of the foie gras, though morphia, even in considerable quantities, has to most persons only a faint odour.
Concluding paragraph in the British Journal of Ophthalmology by J. Herbert Parsons, August 1920. Ibse dixit refers to an unproven assertion. |
Image of Dr. Edridge-Green via The Royal College Surgeons of England |
Via the National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine |
The Latest Application in Scientific Principals by Louis Wain |
Among the treasure trove of referee reports is one by physicist Shelford Bidwell (inventor of a precursor to the fax machine) about a paper on 'The evolution of the colour sense' by Frederick William Edridge-Green in 1900. Bidwell describes the author as ‘a crank’, and the paper as not only plagiarized but also ‘rubbish of so rank a character that no competent person could possibly take any other view of it’:"Having long ago recognised in him all the well-known characteristics of a 'crank', I have carefully avoided entering into any discussion with him or expressing any opinion as to his views."
He then goes on to suggest that if the Society takes issue with ‘this admission of bias’ they should refer the paper to someone else. Edridge-Green’s tests for colour blindness were nonetheless adopted by the Royal Navy.
The report by referee Shelford Bidwell, including the summary, reveal a lack of professionalism and ethics on the part of Dr. Edridge-Green. It was issued 32 years before the doctor wrote to Nature about the alleged cat episode. F.W. Edridge-Green died on April 17, 1953. His obituary in the British Journal of Ophthalmology refers to the doctor as “a controversialist” whose conclusions sometimes lacked the basis of fact. There is no mention of family left behind in Edridge-Green’s obituary. Not even a cat.
Maréchal Niel Roses by Henri Fantin Latour(1883) The flowers have a strong raspberry, tea and violet scent. |