pure grace philosophy for women

☆ info 

+ title: pure grace philosophy for women

+ year: 2025

+ dimensions: 36 inches x 48 inches x 20 inches

+ medium: inkjet image transfers on cotton fabric, screen print on cheesecloth, thread, wood

★ description of process
+ investigating the discrepancies between perceptual data (senses), data categorization and image visualization/identification

+ searched for my everyday perfume (Pure Grace by Philosophy) on fragrantica.com (‘a comprehensive online resource, magazine, and community dedicated to fragrance enthusiasts’). Perfumes on fragrantica are documented and categorized in several ways, including by notes (individual ingredients), main accords (blends of notes), longevity (how long the perfume lasts), and sillage (the scent trail a perfume leaves behind). Fragrantica forum users vote collectively to determine how a perfume performs in each category.

+ compiled a list of text derived from the notes and accords of Pure Grace by Philosophy. (“citrus”, “pure”, “rose”, “powdery”, “musky”, “floral”)

+ using Apple’s neural engine indexing on the Photos app, I searched my personal image archive of 53,866 photos ranging from 2022-2025 using the notes and accords mentioned above as keywords.

+ the front layer text is pulled from fragrantica.com’s identified main accords of my everyday perfume, and the base layer is derived of images that came up in apple photo’s neural engine indexing using the perfume base notes as keywords. Often the images which the engine identified picked up on details unrelated to the scent. Several definitions emerge; what Fragrantica forum users think my perfume smells like, what my phone thinks ‘musky’ or ‘powdery’ is, and what the perfume actually smells like in the air. Altogether, the layers form an intimate capture of a personal dataset. The cheesecloth hanging in front of the base layer of images creates a moire effect, altering the perception of text and image as the viewer changes angles.