Sephora Sensorium
A pop-up museum installed in Manhattan in 2012.
The Sensorium was a project funded by Sephora and Firmenich, installed in the meat-packing district in New York from October 7th to November 27th 2011. The Sensorium could be described as a “scent museum,” with six separate rooms. My main responsibility was an installation in the fifth room called "Lucid Dreams," executed with the Department of the 4th Dimension in LA, architect Elena Manferdini, and media artist Justin Lui.
The "Lucid Dreams" Team:
Creative Director, Matt Checkowski,
Executive Producer, Ron Cicero
Interactive Lead Designer, Gautam Rangan
Physical Designer, Justin Lui
Physical Lead Designer, Elena Manferdini
Content Lead Designer, Ken Pelletier
Sound Designer, Patrick Cicero
Soldering and Technical Assistance, Kevin Haywood, Yoko Nakano, Steve Ziadie.
Lucid Dreams features 4 adjacent interactive sculptures designed to create a dream-like, synesthetic experience for the visitor. The exhibit is a reactive environment that changes as the visitor smells the perfumes. I worked to prototype and construct the installation over two months. I developed the sensor system and software to visualize the sound of the visitor breathing as he or she inhales the perfume. I used the minim sound library to process the audio input and identify the sound and shape of a sniff.
Lucid Dreams received a Gold Pencil at the One Show Design Awards,an In-Book Slice at the D&AD professional awards, a Nomination for Technological Breakthrough at the FiFi awards, an Award for Spatial Design at the AICP Next Show, and a Notable Mention in Interaction for the Core 77 International Design Awards.
Watch the Making of Sensorium
A shot of the interior of the museum.
A screenshot of my processing app using minim that recognizes the shape and sound of sniff.
The beautifully designed perfume flower, designed by Elena Manferdini. Because it was 3d printed, I had the liberty of providing exact specs for the various sensors I embedded in the structure. So they fit very nicely! Photo by Justin Lui
I worked to prototype and construct the installation over two months. I developed the sensor system and software to visualize the sound of the visitor breathing as he or she inhales the perfume. I used the minim sound library to process the audio input and identify the sound and shape of a sniff. I used an Arduino to read from an array of sensors that approximated the nature of the user's breathe.
