CBORG (Community Based Olfactory Research Group)
CBORG is a collaborative roving research team working to make sensory education and research more widely accessible and politically/artistically valuable to our communities in Chicago. Resting upon the belief that smell is a skill and way of knowing that has been long devalued by systems of power, the group was co-started by myself and researcher Jas Brooks with the intention that everyone could use more practice learning through their noses. Following, we’ve been launching CBORG on an educational note by putting on a series of scent + open-source technology workshops throughout 2019 and 2020.
We want this work to be as collaborative and woven together with the interests, capacities, and emotional/intellectual/political investments of our communities and loved ones as possible - if anyone has interest in:
-learning about any specific components of smelling/making/thinking about scent?
-any specific application of fragrance, from art to science to technology to organizing to communication to to to?
-collaboratinging on a short or long term research project with scent as a component? we’d love to hear from you!
Photos are from our first workshop, Scenting Arduinos: DIY Diffusers, hosted at Floods Hall in April 2019. We combined intro-level fragrance blending with an intro to programming open-source microcontrollers, resulting in the creation of DIY diffusers (with an arduino microcontroller and a custom-made scent) that the participants took home.
We want this work to be as collaborative and woven together with the interests, capacities, and emotional/intellectual/political investments of our communities and loved ones as possible - if anyone has interest in:
-learning about any specific components of smelling/making/thinking about scent?
-any specific application of fragrance, from art to science to technology to organizing to communication to to to?
-collaboratinging on a short or long term research project with scent as a component? we’d love to hear from you!
Photos are from our first workshop, Scenting Arduinos: DIY Diffusers, hosted at Floods Hall in April 2019. We combined intro-level fragrance blending with an intro to programming open-source microcontrollers, resulting in the creation of DIY diffusers (with an arduino microcontroller and a custom-made scent) that the participants took home.
