Recently, scents and sounds from Kirkbride Plan hospitals traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Sensory Decay Symposium, an interdisciplinary conference about multisensorial, experimental archaeology hosted by the University of Amsterdam’s School of Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. 

According to conference organizers Pamela Jordan and Sara Mura, the Symposium aimed to enrich our understanding of built environments and the past by considering “how we can isolate and record the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of decay within the continuum of deterioration.” Such sensory-based research is invaluable, they argue, since “sensing decay in a constructed environment is a multisensory experience,” yet “the stages of decay can be transitory and ever-changing.”

Although our senses “provide tools to analyze the presence of decay and its temporal stages, for example in material heritage conservation, a particular methodological challenge is how we, as multi-disciplinary sensory analysts, can record our own numerous but fast decaying experiences as avenues to questioning and interpreting the past.” In addition to sharing research methods, Jordan and Mura believed that such a gathering of “sensory analysts” might shed further light on “how particular sensory aspects of decay may prompt cultural responses and actions,” including “the aestheticization of architectural ruins.”

Of the thirteen diverse talks presented, two considered Kirkbride Plan hospitals from distinct sensorial approaches. In “Sound the Asylum,” composer-producers Melissa Grey and David Morneau featured resonant frequencies recorded on-site in the State Hospitals at Athens, OH and Buffalo, NY. My own talk, “The Scent of Kirkbride Plan Asylums and the Decay of American Mental Health Infrastructures,” featured video-recorded insights from my PreservationWorks colleagues and our extended community of explorer-preservationists.

Sound the Asylum

Sound the Asylum, a project by composer-producers Melissa Grey & David Morneau, “is a growing catalog of immersive audio documentation, recording the aural identity of decaying asylum interiors in 19th–century Kirkbride Plan hospitals.” Thus far, Grey and Morneau have documented the Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, New York, in August 2023, and The Ridges in Athens, Ohio, in October 2023.

For their on-site documentation, Grey & Morneau “use an ambisonic recording technique to capture the activation of resonant frequencies in full 360^o spatial surround. A series of recordings—each a recording of the previous iteration amplified by a loudspeaker—gradually reveal the humming resonance of a room’s dimensions and character. These frequencies become part of the color of every sound activated in the space. It is an aural phenomenon that provides the ear spatial information. [This] process captures the sounds in and around the asylum—summer insects, tolling church bells, and bits of decaying plaster falling to the floor. These sounds give a sense of place, immersing the listener in the sonic landscape of the resonating frequencies that would have softly imbued every sound of daily life for the patients, staff, and visitors in these buildings.”

To listen to Grey & Morneau’s Sound the Asylum project and to sign up for periodic updates, visit https://flowercat.org/sta/ (retrieved 12/19/2023).

The Scent of Kirkbride Plan Hospitals

In keeping with the Sensory Decay Symposium’s embrace of new methods to investigate the transitory, multisensorial continuum between personal experience and cultural landscapes, my own talk drew upon explorer-preservationists’ scent recollections of Kirkbride Plan hospitals, casting new light on several of their signature architectural features. This approach evolved from an intriguing conversation several years earlier during which former PreservationWorks President, Christian VanAntwerpen, described the olfactory capacities of explorers to detect nuances of scent among Kirkbride Plan hospitals. Since multisensorial historical research had been pivotal to my study of Renaissance memory chambers, ideas from this conversation bounced around in my mind, awaiting the call of an opportune moment.

That moment arrived with the Sensory Decay Symposium.

Of course, not all explorers are compelled to preserve, and not all preservationists may be inclined to explore, but a group such as PreservationWorks represents growing interest in the overlap of both activities, reinforcing this symposium’s exploration of “multi-sensory experiences as vehicles for building deeper connections between people and place.” Ten explorer-preservationists from PreservationWorks and our community responded to my invitation in late summer 2023 to video-record themselves recounting a poignant olfactory encounter with abandoned Kirkbride Plan hospitals. A few choice excerpts of their reflections are offered here (watch the videos to match the phrases with the explorers listed in the caption below): 

More to Come

To listen to Grey & Morneau’s Sound the Asylum project and to sign up for periodic updates as it unfolds, visit https://flowercat.org/sta/ (retrieved 12/19/2023). 

Recently, the symposium hosts invited me to contribute an expanded version of “The Scent of Kirkbride Plan Asylums…” as a chapter for a new digital book, entitled New Sensory Approaches to the Past: Applied Methods in Sensory Heritage and Archaeology (UCL Press) in development for 2024 release. 

Related links:

• Sensory Decay Symposium’s videos: Videos of the Sensory Decay Symposium – Archaeology, Architecture and the Virtual Past – Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) – University of Amsterdam (uva.nl)
• The Sensory Decay Symposium program and abstracts may be accessed here
• The Sensory Research Group may be accessed here

Links to previous Kirkbride on Kirkbride posts: 

• Transforming Memory: An Adaptive Reuse Studio for Three Kirkbride Plan Hospitals

• New Model for an Old Dilemma? 
• Challenges Pandemics Present for Psychiatric Hospitals and the Risks of Repressing Histories 
• Margaret Schilling’s Trace at The Ridges 
• New Friends at Oregon State Hospital Pt. 1 
• New Friends at Oregon State Hospital Pt. 2