This podcast was amazing. It presents 5 people or companies who deal with mapping the world through the 5 senses.
Before I talk about the podcast I want to include a link to a Borges story about a group of cartographers who map an entire empire and each point coincides with the real location.
http://boingboing.net/2009/05/20/a-map-the-size-of-th.html The video is wonderful.
The first person interviewed was Dennis Wood who mapped out his neighborhood with very obscure visual maps for instance, which houses had pumpkins at Halloween and how the light trickled through trees in the summertime.
My favorite of the five was an interview with Toby Lester who mapped the sounds of refrigerator, heater and other mechanical sounds in his office and home. It made me think of creating a symphony based on the noises we hear daily. He talks about a book by Deryck Cooke called
The Language of Music, that gives different emotional equations to notes, for example: "Pleasurably longing with a context of finality" and "Active anguish in a context of flux".
At the end the interviewer makes a comment about someday receiving a visitor who is a "house tuner', someone who will tune all the appliances so we can live in piece and harmony in our environments. I like this idea.
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Music-Clarendon-Paperbacks/dp/0198161808
The third group was Cyrano Sciences, the makers of an artificial nose. They mapped out certain chemical make-ups of scents and were able to create a nose that has a limited scent palette. They hope one day to be able to diagnose different illnesses with it. At the end the interviewer asks the question "Is smelling a purely human characteristic?" I added a picture so you can see the final casing they decided on. The interview took place before they had created an exterior for the "nose".
The fourth was a hypochondriac woman who mapped out her body by touch looking for tumors.
And the fifth was Jonathan Gold who mapped out an entire street by taste and the restaurants that lined it.
