Temporalities of the smellscape: Creative mapping as visual representation

This chapter responds to debates in olfactory art and urbanism that highlight the challenges inherent in obtaining and sharing a vast, ephemeral and eye-invisible olfactory dataset. Concerned with representation and communication of the smellscape as
theorised by J. Douglas Porteous and activated by Victoria Henshaw, the case study, situated in Kyiv, explores how mapping might record temporal qualities of smell and contribute to communication of non-visual olfactory information. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods; sensewalking, agentic mapping, rhythmanalysis and creative practice, I develop and apply original approaches to practices of smellscape mapping as a means of analysing, interpreting and communicating a theorised fragmentary and episodic olfactory landscape. The findings include visualisations to indicate multiscalar temporalities of a city, polyrhythmic relationships between the situated human body and a range of smells, and a series of projective mappings that render visible olfactory-sensed information. Together they examine relationships between smells and space, smells and time, and smells and people.