Déjà vu

Déjà vu is an olfactory installation that explores how scent can bring back memory, time, and traces of the self. Through twelve scents, petri dishes, moving clock shadow, dripping, and prompt cards, visitors are invited to slow down, choose a scent, and enter their own memory.

Project Video

Abstract

Déjà vu is an olfactory installation about scent, time, memory, and traces of the self. The project begins from my long-term sensitivity to smell and my interest in the Proust Effect, where a familiar scent can unexpectedly bring back a memory. For me, scent is rarely just a pleasant smell. It often belongs to a person, a place, a season, or a version of myself that has already passed. When images and details become unclear, scent can still return with surprising clarity, bringing back not only what happened, but also how that moment felt. The installation uses twelve scents as a loose calendar of remembered time. Each scent is connected to one month, but the months are not meant to tell a fixed story. Instead, they work as open memory anchors. Visitors move around twelve petri dishes, smell the scents, choose one that relates to them, and use a dropper to place the scent onto a prompt card. The prompt card becomes a small takeaway, but more importantly, it gives the visitor a quiet moment to ask: what am I remembering? Time is made visible through a moving clock shadow and a slow dripping system. Each falling drop suggests the passing of a second. The water slowly enters the scented oil, echoing how time can dilute memory, while scent can still open a small window back into the past. The dripping action asks visitors to wait, rather than consume the scent instantly. This waiting becomes part of the experience. Throughout the process, the project shifted from a scent delivery system into a memory ritual. Earlier prototypes used fabric, airflow, tubes, sensors, and printed outputs, but they made the work feel either too abstract or too system-driven. I realized that the installation should not be about technology reading the visitor. It should create the conditions for visitors to read their own memories through scent. In the final work, petri dishes, labels, prompt cards, dim light, clock shadow, and dripping are all designed to support one quiet experience. Déjà vu does not try to preserve memory as a clear record. It creates a space where memory briefly returns through the body, atmosphere, and smell.

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