A carpet made with hiking shoes laces, my hiking shoes, pine wood trucks, IR lamp, fan, pine honey, immersive headphones, sound of the forest and smell of the fireplace.

Komorebi is an immersive art installation that tends to offer an escape from the urban and noisy exhibition context. Through a multi-sensorial approach this installation seeks to bring each visitor to the middle of a forest, and to have enough rest and quietness to be able to be immersed within their own “Natsukashi” memories of pastoral experiences. 

From my point of view an artistic experience always creates a distance from real life. Any naturalistic approaches are dedicated to fail because of the artificiality of Art. In consequence, I did not try to “duplicate” a natural environment that would perfectly fit to previous in-site forest experiences. Instead, I focused on re-enacting the feelings that you can have when you wish to rest in the forest. To achieve this I chose to use only hand-made objects and technological products.

Jeanne Goutelle, a textile artist, produced the carpet made of shoes laces from my own hiking shoes. This carpet recreated the softness of a moss ground and played by contrast with the hard concrete floor of the exhibition space. A stick of pine honey brings a bit of taste of the forest. An IR Lamp gives the feeling of a warm sun on your face. The wind of a small fan skims your legs. A sound recording projects the visitor between the cracking of the trees and the birds singing, and finally a wax with the scent of a fireplace was mixed with the smell of freshly cut pinewood.

As the carpet design suggests, this artwork is a camouflage of real nature but brings visitors into contact with real souvenirs of this nature. Within this installation I tried to give more space than usual to a more sensitive experience. If this “displacement” succeeds I think that it is so because it starts from the reality of body perceptions and not just from conceptual suggestions. Dealing with memories and Natsukashi feelings is something very personal. I doubt that producing an artwork based too much on “meanings” derived through language or conscious thinking could go any further than producing an intellectual projection of the idea of nature (for literature this would be different as the act and the context of reading a book is open to a time-space relationship that is sufficiently personal). Within an art exhibition context it would be quite limited as “meanings” could be overly based on common notions or on shared conventions and, from my point of view, these are powerless to reach the level of uniqueness and personal attributes required.

The exhibition process was also very important both in relation to the art and the science aspects. By asking visitors to smell the scent sample and complete a Profile of Mood States (POMS) test before and after having experienced the different art works may have enabled them to be more focused and involved in the art experience. Perhaps this may have created some bias in relation to how the artworks were then perceived by those completing the POMS test, but even allowing for this I think that this potential bias might have had a positive impact on the quality of their experience. 

This is particularly relevant as one of the key points for introducing an olfactory dimension in art is that all the art systems have to be changed. The production and the mediation of the olfactory experience have to be developed step-by-step so as to be psychologically and physiologically efficient.

The success of this first exhibition of our research program is due to the fact that mediation did not interfere with the different art experiences; it surrounded and reinforced them. No artworks have been made to be didactic, and they did not seek to mediate themselves, which, from my point of view, could have destroyed part of the art quality. The POMs testing process was engaging but clearly perceived as a scientific experience. The art and the science were at the right balance because they did not try to act on the same (a mixed) layer, but on multiple layers, to help visitors to get a “thicker” experience of the show.

Boris Raux