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Annelie Berner


Projects

    1. Scent of the Future Flower

    2. Plant Futures

    3. Diverse Dreams

    4. Clouds above, clouds below

    5. Futurescaping Climate

    6. Ethics Fingerprint

    7. Escaping the Strange Loop

    8. Crossing Disciplines

    9. Future Erasure

    10. The Ethical Stack

    11. AiryLight

    12. Visualising Research

    13. The Synapse

    14. Radials

    15. Life Centred

    16. Cupcakes Index


Courses

    1. Creatove Data Visualisation

    2. Designing Ethical Futures

    3. Poetic Data

    4. Eccentric Interfaces, Environmental Interventions


Talks & Workshops

    1. Index Space

    2. ITU

    3. RISE Research Institute

    4. NYU IMA Low-Res

    5. New School

    6. Hyper Island

    7. TED X CPH


Annelie Berner —

Annelie Berner is an interaction designer specialised in data visualisation.
Mark

Scent of the Future Flower


Imagine the scent of the future flower. As part of research on how flowers respond to climate change, we found that their scents might also shift in reaction to climate change. Together with Future Society, Monika Seyfried and I envisioned the scent of a future flower, shaping unique perfume concepts that make the climate of 2100 tangible through sensory experiences. 

Just as we try to center ourselves in the present moment by connecting with nature, could we step into the future by experiencing the future nature? How might it feel to immerse ourselves in the scents and colours of the flowers that could surround us in the futures?

Though one might think that a rose’s scent will be the same forever, in fact flowers’ scents can change drastically in relation to their climate. Increased ozone emissions disrupt the scent molecules, warmer temperatures or drier conditions put stress on flowers, which they express by altering their scent. This change of the scent is tied to defense, protection, as well as potentially attracting new pollinators.

To imagine the future flower scent, we looked into how many different flowers respond to the changing climate, how those changes impact their scents. Because of the entangled systems we both contain inside ourselves and inhabit, we also researched other angles of the question, such as evolutionary biology, bacterial intelligence.⁠

Below is some of the early research that eventually led to the design of scent concepts for Future Society. These scent concepts will be released as perfumes in 2027.


As part of the research, I prototyped a visualisation of scent molecules and how they react to climate, as show in the 4th slide above. It is built in d3.js and uses data from one of the scientific papers we read about flower scent shifts. In the visualisation, I show all of the molecules that make up the scent of the flower in different locations around the world, and then re-organise them based on frequency of each molecule type. 


Date: Summer - Winter 2024

Role: Researcher, designer, developer.
Technologies: d3.js

Collaborators: Monika Seyfried
Client: Future Society

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