New Realities: Design – Arts – Technology

Smell Forward is a fictional exploration of a close future that focuses on the sense of smell to offer new interaction possibilities and question the contemporary movement towards digitalization and dematerialization. Olfaction is a multifaceted sense that offers an incomparable immersive and sensory experience, which can be seen as a time machine bringing us back to past memories but also projecting us forward, making it an ideal narrative instrument to question our future. Using scents as investigative tools it promotes an innovative form of storytelling to relate to prospective visions in the physical world here and now.

Based on six speculative scenarios happening between 2029 and 2079, Smell Forward offers an olfactive and visual illustration of a future where humans and AI robots are living in a growing symbiosis on our planet sinking into an ecological disaster. By giving a notion of a critical hyperreality to future scenarios, these counter narratives embodied into scents stimulate our imagination and could help us to actively shape and prototype new visions for tomorrow’s world.

Priscille Jotzu (*1990) is a French born designer, artist and researcher. With a perspective focused on experimentation, conceptual thinking and research into a singularity, she investigates our relation to the daily mundane artefacts, more specifically through the spectrum of the lower senses. She completed her education within the design department of the Beaux-arts school of Angers, France (BA and MA Object Design) as well as at Zurich University of the Artsl (MA Trends&Identity) where she studied strategic and visual design, trends and future forecasting and empirical social research. Her expertise range from creative consultancy with a focus on scents and materials, creation and production of custom-made objects and set design as well as future research with focus on innovation, prospective objects and design fiction. She works both on commissioned and self-initiated projects in the scope of design and art, producing one-of-a-kind artefacts and speculative objects that aim to stretch the narratives of the real and give space to our imaginaries.

Designer:
Priscille Jotzu

Mentors:
Prof. Bitten Stetter
Francis Müller
Michaela Büsse

Project type:
Masterarbeit Trends & Identity
ZHdK

Year:
2018

Portfolio:
cargocollective.com/PriscilleJotzu