Introduction

Smell that enters - Sound that enters - Light that enters.

Research pages of Aroma Molecule Experiments - Post object Art.


We long for a safe molecular river in the brain, that goes off like a lightning strike. We explore these aroma-molecules like we do our lovers bodies; with joy for the quantum undulations that are part of our compositional strategy (for living).



Thursday 6 March 2008

Helional - Ozonic & Marine



hydrocinnamaldehyde, alpha-methyl-3,4-(methylenedioxy)

Described as harsh, fresh air, marine green with top notes of fresh mown hay this is one of the materials that is classed as Ozonic.

Others in this class of marine and ozonics (in various shades) include Ultrazur, Maritima, Scentenal,melonal, methoxymelonal, bourgeonal, florhydral, cyclamal, silvial, precyclemone b, vernaldehyde, myrac aldehyde, geraldehyde, citronellyl
oxyacetaldehyde (muguet aldehyde), ozonil, isofreshal nitrile, adoxal,
ozofleur, aphermate, pinoacetaldehyde, arbozol, tangerinol, melafleur,
melozone, azuril, floralozone, fleuranil, dupical, gelsone, intreleven
aldehyde, octacetal, decave, decyl methyl ether, undecenol, dynascone,
cyclogalbanate, cyclaprop, cis-3-hexenyl salicylate, algae abs. (a large number of the above as suggested by Timon from the mailing list Perfume Making.)


Before a thunderstorm – the asphalt seems to float up about six feet, releasing its medicinal vapor like a blanket. Another invisible force as movement and shape – the road rises off the ground, its aura, its second body, its double, its twin, its particle version. How many of these things form part of our world. We should make a map like te sound ecologists tried to do with sound. Sound Ecology perhaps a bit side tracked with a mild fixation on the essential qualities of the natural, over the man made.Undoubtedly influential and some great work done but not if it just leads one back to the same old orthodoxys, the binary of culture/nature.

Far away, standing in scratchy deep green heath, forked lightning approaches. The air changes and we smell gunpowder flint, the breaking of rocks, a percussive dryness, the white hot flash of a lizards tongue through the sky, however, is it actually Ozone or the excited particles of burning air I can smell? We weave our way up out of Wollemi Creek in a blessed thunderstorm (it was red hot in the build up, making the ascent an almost frightening prospect) we jumped at the strikes as they went to ground on either side of the ridge we where climbing.

Super charged something’s, the smell of electricity, burning ions, overheating wires. In an instant, the speed crack of malfunction, mixed with burnt plastic. Blitzen & Thumpen. The circuit board sizzles and dies, right at the last minute before the opening. Influenced perhaps by Solar Weather. Sun spot cycles that blast the earth with radiation, everything’s in a cycle, a wave, a movement.Could it have been that hidden time.

(future of television) “ And on the space weather front things are not looking good for tomorrow, Tony. We have a large ionic storm approaching, leading to the possible failure of handheld devices and navigation systems” though far more likely it will be more like >“We communicate more and more in more defined ways than ever before. But no one has got anything to say It's all very poor it's all just a bore”em> - Stereolab End Station Break

Torching dust and displaying it, like some mad Duchampian experiment. “How is it you make your Art, again?” (Pause for a second) “Oh I am a professional dust burner upperer. I heat it with a flame. It takes me all around the world, mate. “ Anything’s possible in a capitalist system!

I am looking at some of the ozonic and marine molecules for a commission we have fo based on a river. This is some river; it’s in the backwaters of Sydney Harbor. It has many distinct zones. Fresh water at the top above a weir and tidal below that, eventually leading to the famous harbor and out into the wide blue Pacific.

In its furthest reaches and catchments there are weed infested creeks. The very same ones that I used to explore in my childhood. On the banks in the tidal section, shiny twisted Mangroves rising out of nutrient rich, acrid, industrial waste sodden mud? On the banks, in some places wild Fennel smelling of aniseed, one of the essential oils of amphetamine, tangled in amongst the natives. Was the fennel planted by migrants? I suspect that’s the case.

Rust is blood and the hulks of industrial machinery lay everywhere, like a battle that’s taken place in the future. Remember, in the land of OZ where we live, the future is Mad Max style - Bricollage boundary riders, all improvised space ships as if designed by Alison Cloustan and buxom amozonian alpha women that straddle levitating motorcycles, ready to drive that wooden spear, straight “up ya ass, mate”

Before river side suburbia completely takes over in the area, around Ryde, we have the astonishing contraptatron of the Shell Oil refinery. A Sydney landmark for its eternal flame seen daily from one of our major highways and the subject of a brilliant Australian Novel, by one of our finest writers, David Ireland.

“The Unknown Industrial Prisoner” I discovered in the first year of high school. Here was a book that described so directly, in utterly vivid and surreal terms, using a newfound syntax and structure,the very world I was living in. It takes you into the full on intensity of living on the edge of the interface between the vast tracks of the ghost of market gardens and fruit orchids and penal colony archi- shadows of reclaimed suburbia and the chug and pulse and mystery of the factories that where starting to flourish in post 1960’s Australia. When I think about it, this part of Sydney is full of quasi mythological ghostly structures and installations – sandstone quarries that provided the building blocks for the nineteenth century mental hospitals, gaols, government houses, tree stumps from the first farm, yard rails(where we where told as kids that they killed the blacks) and Masonic halls that no one seemed to go to anymore and not forgetting the almost impenetrable substations that hummed like summer cicada's. All of this, amidst various levels of freshly painted 50’s and sixties modernism (if you could call it that)and the strange flimsy housing commisions. And then, the creeks mentioned above. Always either in flood or showing the signs of a former flood – reeds along the banks swept back like a flick back hairstyle, of the latest crush. But always signifying danger – the ghosts of dead children inhabited almost every bank, another kid sucked into a slimy drainpipe during a storm, the subject of a futile rescue attempt, snuffed out by dirty black water. I bet it was a cold death.

Along the main channel below the Parramatta weir, a decommissioned gasworks, rubber factories, and eventually reclaimed land, fast tracked little utopias. The modernist housing villages worthy of J.G Ballard, cut grass and beautiful jacaranda trees and shiny rails and square windows and grey bag renderings with fake wood and yellow stone; probably churned out of a factory in India. Assembled god knows where and shipped in as panels – a perfectly serviceable looking feaux hand crafted dry rendered stone wall.

I see on the bank a crashed car, more rust smell, this time with oil and in keeping with the theme of Ballard, a mud soaked G string, once red - now sun faded pale menstrual pink, also muddy - a used condom in the sun and what looks like spatters of something like blood on the car bonnet. Loads of weird rubbish. Comme de Garcons Garage, anyone ! Not quite, but almost. Definetely a blood accord required.Something with an iron molecule. I remember pouring hundreds of liters of blood for Hermann Nitsche - it smelt antiseptic, thick, balsamic and somehow amazingly like plastic.

To do this latest task, I have been building a collection of marine odorants. First arrival was Ultrazur, a proprietary accord from Givaudan – what a bunch of molecules this is. This stuff is overwhelmingly strong. I notice it has a life of 400 hundred hours on the blotter. I must test this idea, but it seems to me this stuff is just full bore intensity from whoa to go. Some perfumery materials are like this. Vanilla is one people are warned about, how it will override everything else in a composition. For some that might be a pleasant outcome but this accord is not something that you want to pour a bottle of over yourself in a hurry (not even your worst enemy). According to the Givaudan website, its said to be Inspired by a visit to the islands of the Indian Ocean. Reminiscent of walking on the beach, this high impact, substantive base features an accord of clean ozonic air fused with sun dried tropical woods.

Some walk on the beach! Straight into the mouth of a dead whale. I get something much more fecund and challenging out of the smell of this material than a walk on an indian ocean beach (even in extreme dilution) I have also observed a change of perception with this one, where one is initially hit in the face with a raw egg yolk nuance (sulphurous perhaps) that becomes less and less prominent over time. Could this be impurities leaving the bottle – or continuing maturation of the material? Why not? It happens with any accord and even an EO like patchouli ages over time. The other day with Katherine, as we walked we smelt the sea...whacked in the face with sulphur and taken back to fishing with my father. Very few molecules in the perfumery world contain sulphur. Next Maritima by IFF, someone nice, recently sent me an aluminium flask of the stuff. A very knowledgable perfumerer pointed out to me Maritimas Oddball character. A blood note. Now thats a coincidence re the above.

Some time later.

I know what he means – on the smelling strip there is certainly a metallic ring to this material but it is also very fresh like the smell of air. I don’t get any saltiness what so ever which is interesting given the name. It’s long lasting. Three hours later it smells exactly like it did when it was first put on the strip out of the bottle, though the so called blood note has risen up in pitch it’s neither meaty nor animalic. Apparently it’s a nitrogen bearing molecule, a pyridine which is fairly unusual. (4-(4,8-dimethyl-3,7-nonadienyl) pyridine) on the IFF website its olfactory description doesn’t mention fresh blood but it does say Fresh, Ozone (Fresh Air/Marine) Powerful, clean, wet, fresh air tone reminiscent of ocean breezes. I like this material, it smells very fresh and indeed airy – pre and post thunderstorm and a little bit flint like. I don’t much like the Wicki entry on Pyridines they seem scary and toxic. This one is not subject to any allergen restrictions so one may assume it’s fairly safe, but you wouldn’t want to drink it.
Other Pyridines are apparently fishy. This one aint got no fish smell.Its all air.

So heres an idea for something linear. It struck me walking out in the Wollemi area a few weeks ago, how aromatic and herb like this tract of Australian bush is. Eucalyptus is dominant in the Austrlian bush along with very dry banksia, dry schlerophyl is the common name for a lot of the country near to where I live. But somehow we had landed in another eco system altogether ( we had escaped the smell of eucalyptus) and wherever we went (we where off track or bush bashing as they call it in this part of the world) the aromatic nature of the crushed plants was not familiar at all. The fragrance experience was very linear,perhaps defined might be a better word.It was nothing like a lot of classical perfumery, where you have accord heaped upon accord creating something unworldly and hyper-blended. This was the single smell of some unknown plant mixed with the smell of the breeze and maybe a little dust but mostly air, plus something, plus something else. Three things then two of them fairly non descript or unnamable and one strong thing that was also unnamable. Curious experience. Up on that ridgeline and later down in the valleys it was tough going and very hot, but it would be great to go out there and spend a week making smell maps and even maybe tincturing some of this stuff.

Get some Maritima and add things to it.

A series of linear accords hence we could have for starters

Air & dry leaves
Air and dirt
Air and Rust
Air and sandstobe cave
Air and native holly etc etc

A week later I go back to the smelling strip with Maritima on it, smells very similar in intensity as to when it was fiorst dipped and the " Blood note" rings loud and true - it smells metallic and there is also a slight lolly like nuance maybe like iceing sugar smell to what is basically a very fresh smelling long lasting chemical. Fresh blood with breeze and cake !



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/2007/03/chanel-formulas-news.html