Five Echoes | Es Devlin

Visitors will arrive through Palm Court and enter the temporary forest filled with birdsong.
Each tree is labelled with its name - their names also feature in the soundscape - I am keen for our guests to start to learn their names.

In addition, the tree name labels will include a list of the phytoncides released by each tree and their properties and effects on the human brain as well as information about the number of stomata (greek for mouths) on each leaf and the amount of carbon sequestered and oxygen generated by each tree.

Visitors are invited first to wander around the forest - Ambassadors should mention the labels and invite visitors to consider the trees as active participants in the work.

Visitors are then invited to enter the Labyrinth

They are first directed towards the south outer ramp and make their way up through the trees, getting closer to the crowns and high branches and leaves as they circumnavigate the sculpture. At the apex of the ramp visitors will find an entrance to the top circular viewing platform. From this vantage point they are able to look down on the full area of forest and maze from above and understand the pattern of the labyrinth and extent of the forest within the city context.

Ambassadors might mention the parallel between this setting and the position of the convent Aubazine within the surrounding forest. It may be read as an expression between the architectural form of a scent and the raw natural elements surrounding it.

They will observe other guests weaving their way through labyrinthine paths that snake first in one direction and then the next. The movement echoes the original snaking dance that was performed in Ancient Greece and which the word Labyrinth first described, before later describing the floor plan that was marked up to guide the dancers, and later still the architecture of walls extruded from this floor plan. The dance purposely expressed a community looking first in one direction and then switching its leader to the opposite end to follow the opposite direction - sometimes within in one community two directions were sustained at once.

As guests arrive on the circular platform they will observe the sundial markings beneath their feet - the calibrations relate not only to the passage of the sun overhead at this particular spot on the planet, but also to the 28 minutes during which the molecules in Chanel No 5 evaporate, at different times, depending on their varying molecular densities

Visitors then descend the north outer ramp and enter the inner maze sculpture . They weave between the scented jasmine garden between ramp and sculpture (ambassadors might mention that jasmine is a key ingredient in No 5 : 1000 jasmine flowers from Grasse in southern France are included in each bottle )— Guests then find their way between the labyrinth walls , following the soundscape towards the central chamber of the labyrinth.

The walls of the labyrinth are formed of stretched fabric over a timber frame, illuminated at night. At the heart of the labyrinth, standing directly beneath the viewing platform overhead, visitors will hear the sound of the labyrinth, a counterpoint between the ticking, mechanical , percussive rational expression of logical analysis - based on the 28 minute comparative molecular weight analysis gas chromatography technique, and a more expressive choral vocal human sound world expressing the human correlative to gas chromatography: the passing down through 4 generations the ability to engage fully with planetary , natural phenomena using an intensely engaged human sense of smell.

Ambassadors might explain the process of architecture of a scent, and the passing down of the role of ‘nose’ at Chanel through four generations, two within the same family.

The text within the soundscape is derived from Baudelaire’s poem ‘Correspondences’ from ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ which characterises trees as protagonists, equal in agency to their human visitors.

The light within the walls will be most visible within the inner chamber during daytime visits and will respond to the soundscape - breathing in time with it, in counterpoint to the mechanical ticking of the chromatographic element.

The intention is that the visitor emerges having given consideration to the cerebral calibrations we tend to apply to our immediate sensory experience of the biosphere, and by observing the dual way in which we approach nature, perhaps develop greater awareness of the dissonance between our sensual and cerebral engagement and perhaps begin to understand that our future evolution may depend on the closing of this gap.