Jas Brooks is a graduate student at the University of Chicago pursuing a Computer Science PhD in the Human Computer Integration Lab, as well as a co-founder and researcher of the Community-Based Olfactory Research Group. They graduated from the University of Chicago in 2016 with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science.

Their technical research interests lie in developing novel devices that directly interface with our senses of smell and taste. Jas's research is funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. They previously taught in the Department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Additionally, Jas worked in the Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, developing immersive scientific visualizations primarily in collaboration with Assistant Professor Bobby Kasthuri's lab.

Their artwork deals with themes of technological injustice, sexuality and gender, and the amplification of emotional and aesthetic experiences by technology, chiefly employing a combination of taste, smell, and immersive environments.

Pronouns: they, them, their.

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Download my food

Download my food is a flavor project that features two components. The first is an offline installation featuring vegan jellies in a mini-fridge with a computer set on top of the fridge. In an attempt to use crowd-sourcing as a means of digitizing the flavor information, visitors must try a jelly, and – while tasting – are commanded to fill out a Google Form attempting to collect information on the jelly’s flavor: taste, smell, texture, etc. In turn, their submissions are gathered into a dataset that is made publicly available online. Online visitors access a webpage with a single link that reads “download my food”, which triggers upon clicking the download of both the recipe as an XML file and the current version of the dataset.

Categories: Artwork, Gustatory

A scientist lifts a melon with both hands. Two other scientists rest their hands on the melon. All three wear nitrile gloves.

Perfect melon

Perfect melon is a VR performance aiming to create a fictional corporate persona as a pseudo technology corporation. The “corporation” behind Perfect Melon exploits the alienated senses of its consumers by claiming its products will “reconnect” the viewers to the romanticized idea of a lost natural world. Moreover, Perfect melon explores the corporate interests hidden by the guise of community-building. Perfect melon is activated by audience participation with real-time audio, visual, and flavor components. The participants enter the virtual space with the mission of finding the perfect melon through slapping, hearing, and tasting different melons. Each chosen melon has a unique flavor profile mixed by a flavor (smell + taste) display.

Categories: Artwork, Gustatory, Olfactory, Virtual Reality

A field of particles snaking their way through space, viewed at a distance.

Sanitary selves

Santiary selves is a olfactory VR installation celebrating and critiquing motion capture databases from the 2000s. Audience members are invited to engage with the project through immersive smell and sound as well as interact with the database in a virtual space. Sanitary selves seeks to question the sanitation and omission of markers of identity in the databases, asking whether purely abstract movements can exist when we are so steeped in culture.

Categories: Artwork, Olfactory, Virtual Reality

Close-up of the preserved flower bunches in the Pyrex dish; a soft woody, floral, powdery odor comes from the flowers.

Big time sensibility

The installation explores the perceived synthetic emotions derived from traditional, domestic flower preservation. Flowers were cut from their stem, preserved in paraffin wax, and randomly reattached with botanist’s tape. A thick paraffin blanket affixes the stems to the Pyrex dish. The flowers waft soft floral, powdery, and woody notes from the addition of Dior Homme.

Categories: Artwork, Olfactory

Two exposures of a person spinning around in front of a unedited green screen. The lens's barrel frames the shot.

Simulathon

Marguerite, a young girl in high school, tapes her day at school as it tumbles into a progressively weirder world. Simulathon explores the notion of the simulacrum, particularly tackling the ambiguity and arbitrary nature of “humanity.”

Categories: Artwork, Short Film