Thursday, March 10, 2011

Smell Map of NYC

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/29/opinion/20090829-smell-map-feature.html

This seems slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it's a concept that has been bandied about quite a bit in discussion about phenomenology and such. Following Ingold's reasoning, I think you could argue that a map like this isn't as visually biased as it first seems. We use each of our senses to orient the others. Smell is a particularly experiential sense, linked closely to memory. While we lack the ability to conveniently reproduce smells, we are often able to recall through close description the experience of them.

I believe that the Chicago Tribune also ran a similar feature a couple years before this as well. Note that the most prominent smell in Manhattan according to this map seems to be urine.

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