Smellwalk influences and causality

In my practice there is no smellscape mapping without the smellwalk; the maps emanate from the perceivers and the perceivers operate in real time, not from memory or received information. With this in mind it is essential to recognise the provenance of the smellwalk; the literature and influences, the practitioners and their disparate disciplines. Porteous advocated the smellwalk as a tool for exploring the smellscape in his seminal 1985 paper citing a Lynchean model as his inspiration for how a smellwalk might manifest. The soundscape studies/acoustic ecologies field is full of useful reference and provides a theoretical reference for the practice.

Reading the ‘map’

The graphic takes the form of a causal link diagram, with more than a nod to Barr, depicting the trajectory of my own reflection-in-practice and some external influences. This causal network fixes and simplifies time in space, the action is flattened and no longer serialised – this is a map. Longitudinal markers across the top indicate approximate geographic location, including degrees east or west of Greenwich and 3-letter IATA codes as city references (any use of lower case letters indicates my imaginary coding).