From Scent Projection to Respiratory Protection: Designing Digital Olfactory Interactions for Fashion Wearables

McMillan, Caroline

ABSTRACT In recent times, environmental and psychological threats revive protective dress forms, specifically the mask. Threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and technological infrastructures of surveillance capitalism, materially shape social realities. This paper explores current doctoral research, the AURA case study, which accounts for the cultural, contextual undercurrents and hidden operations of these threats, and how they refashion wearables practice. AURA is a series of Internet of Things (IoT) connected, olfactory wearables that render sensor-captured data into digital scent display. The author argues that bodies, as the subject of and venue for data extraction, are invested in, and fashioned by, bio-political power structures of systemic surveillance. A critical approach examines how bodies are materially re-crafted by physiological and psychological hazards—proposing an expanded understanding of technology as a bodily matter of the social practice of dress. The focus is to lend the notion of bodily matters as an analytical filter for reading important insights from fashion, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) studies through one another while proposing a subversive reworking of olfactory interfaces for wearables. This research employs critical fashion practice to embed wireless communication technologies and digital olfactory data visualisation for a spectrum of purposes, from wearable scent displays to protective forms that shield the body from airborne contaminants. Thoughtful dialogue in temporary public forums and workshops gathers specific issues of automated olfactory display where capitalised technology applications and a global pandemic converge. Community-defined perceived harms and external threats warrant personal protection. The olfactory sense is a way to access emotion-based, ecological and ethical connections across spatial and temporal scales in speculative wearables design. This paper outlines changing roles and practices for multi-sensory wearables innovation, working to suggest new modes beyond current technology development paradigms, for empowered and meaningful interactions in networked data infrastructures.