Faculty of Arts & Science

Digital Futures

Johan Seytoun

Étendue

Étendue is a series of fragrance compositions that describe a landscape through the sense of smell. It acts as the first installment in a work cycle focusing on the Mediterranean basin at large. This initial entry pays homage to Marseille, a city of great significance to the Mediterranean world that has been a site of continuous human activity for thousands of years. The work in part borrows from the practice of field recording (extended from the ear to the nose) and is based on active smelling and analysis at a number of sites in and around the city. Some of the locations include the city's commercial shipping port, desolate shrublands on the outskirts, and the hills of L'Estaque, a quarter of Marseille perhaps most well known as subject of Cézanne's airy scenes and Braque's deconstructions. The smells of these locales were reconstituted with fragrance molecules over the following year, shaped by memory and time in the process. In étendue, urban and pastoral odors intermingle, and through the medium of air the past and present are evoked in tandem. It has been said that only through the nose can a landscape truly reveal itself.

“I. La Joliette / GPMMII. Rue de Suez / Vallon des AuffesIII. L'Estaque, Chemin de la NertheIV. Garriga VersionV. Stagnum MastromelaCover design: GEBCO_2019 Bathymetric Contours”