Karoliina Paappa

SMELLING TIME, 2021

Installation: Soundtrack 9.03 min, PC, PMMA, UV lights, varnish.

For most animal species, the sense of smell is the most important, if not the most important, means of perceiving the environment. One thinks of familiar places usually through what they look like. Most mammals like a cat, dog, and horse, lack the ability to see red. They see colors from purple to yellow. Orange and red are impossible for them to imagine.

Thus, animals may live in a completely different reality, built from a mixture of odors. A dog has about a hundred times the number of odor cells compared to a human and is able to smell air movements. The right moment to start waiting for the hostess, the dog infers from when his characteristic odor has weakened at home to a certain point. So the dog can also smell time. The dog cannot be fooled, for example, by walking the shoes upside down on the foot, it infers from the difference of the odor concentration of the two steps in which direction the walker has gone.

It is difficult to translate a dog’s superior sense of smell into human comprehension. The work converts the information received by the dog as odors into a pictorial form, taking advantage of the properties of phosphorus. The light-retaining, glow-in-the-dark paint tends to represent the time aspect of fading.

On the soundtrack one hears about the common history of the dog and man.