Chronus Art Center presents Smell Dating @ Shanghai by Tega Brain in collaboration with Sam Lavigne.
Smell Dating is the world’s first smell based dating service. It is an elaborate participatory project that invites Shanghai residents to find new connections using only their noses. Smell Dating premiered in New York City in March of 2016 and was featured in press internationally.
Smell is one of the most poignant and evocative experiences afforded by the human sensory apparatus and researchers have found that much can be told from a potential mate’s smell. There is a growing body of research that suggests a person’s genetic compatibility, gender, age, and predisposition to illness are reflected in their “smell signature.” Some researchers even speculate that high contemporary divorce rates may be related to the overuse of deodorants and the underuse of our natural olfactory intelligence. Smell Dating invites you to trust your olfactory intuition and choose dates based on ancient molecular cues.
Sign up for Smell Dating @ Shanghai at smell.dating/cn will occur between June 1-June 16 and costs 100 RMB. （You must live in Shanghai.）
Join us for the Sweat Lab, Chronus Art Center, June 25th.
Participants will be sent a t-shirt to wear and return to CAC. Your worn t-shirt will be imbued with your smell will be batched and distributed to other members. You’ll then receive a selection of other people’s smell from which to select your potential matches. If there’s a mutual match, you’ll be connected via our website and the rest is up to you!
Smell Dating @ Shanghai will culminate in the Sweat Lab, a participatory installation event held in the gallery of the 25th of June as a part of the finish program for Psychoprosa by Thomas Feuerstein. Visitors are invited to volunteer in the Smell Dating Sweat Lab and intimately experience the smells of strangers. During this event we will prepare the smell samples from our members t-shirts. Shirts will be meticulously cut up and batched to be sent back to Smell Dating members.
About Tega Brain
Tega Brain is an Australian born artist and environmental engineer whose work reimagines technologies to address their scope and politics, with a focus on systems that enact more-than-only-human agendas. She has recently exhibited work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Science Gallery Dublin, Eyebeam in New York City and the Australian Centre for Design, Sydney. She has given workshops and talks at museums and conferences like TedxSydney, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Eyeo Festival. She has been an artist in residence at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York City and at the Environmental Health Clinic at New York University. In 2013 she was awarded a Creative Australia Fellowship for early career artists from the Australia Council for the Arts.
About Sam Lavigne
Sam Lavigne is an artist and programmer based in Brooklyn whose work deals with surveillance, cops, data, and automation. He is currently a research fellow at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a contributing editor at The New Inquiry. He is the co-founder of Useless Press, an online publishing collective, and the co-founder of the Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon.
