Smell and the subconsciuosness in installation art

Smell and the Subconsciuosness in Installation Art Chompunuch Vanichayanguranon

MEDIA SPACES (M.A.)

Chompunuch Vanichayanguranon

Committee in Charge: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Katrin Wolf Mr. Florian KĂźhnle

Printed in Berlin, Germany. 2017 BTK Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

1 2 3 4

SENSE OF SMELL

2-3 5-10

SMELL AND THE SUBCONSCIOUSNESS

13-20

23-35

OLFACTORY ART

OLFACTORY ART INSTALLATION

37-56

CONCLUSION

58-59

BIBLIOGRAPHY

60-64

INTRODUCTION

A

commonly accepted definition of sense is a specialized function or mechanism by which an animal (or a human) receives and responds to external or internal stimuli.

There is no exact number of human senses due to the differing definitions of what constitutes a sense. In ancient worldviews, Aristotle classified senses into five categories (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) or so-called traditional senses, while in the modern world, between 9 to 21 senses senses have been identified, including sense of balance (vestibular sense), sense of motion or body awareness (kinesthetic sense), sense of temperature (thermoception), sense of pain (nociception), etc.

The discussion in this paper focuses on five traditionally recognized senses, described by Aristotle, as they are fundamental to our perceptual experience of the world.

Sight is the most developed sense in human beings, telling us the nature of an object and its location in the environment.

Hearing helps us to determine the timing of an event in order to predict its cause and effect. Smell and taste indicate the meaning of the world around us, giving the ability to make decisions, for example, about potential food and drink. Touch makes the world ‘real’, helping us to truly connect and feel intimate with the world around us.

In a world where humans most rely heavily on sight, which is considered the most developed and prominent human sense, sense of smell is often overlooked as a secondary sense. But in fact, sense of smell can influence an early stage of visual perception (Robinson, 2014). Its undeniable power can change the way humans perceive things, and can influence human behavior, causing us to act or to feel in particular ways. This makes smell the most powerful of all senses, as it evokes emotional responses and recalls forgotten memories, making them vivid again.

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The study of the cultural history of smell demonstrates the development of roles of smell in the Western world, from the modern era to the present, revealing that smell has been more important to society than we thought. Sense of smell, especially its subconscious power, has been investigated in different fields of study: medical, commercial, scientific and artistic.

The subject of olfactory art has arisen in the last few decades.

Such primitive, animalistic, and intuitive power of olfaction draws attention from artists to experiment with olfactory perception. Olfactory artists make use of the complex relationship of human olfaction, which is associated with one’s personal past experience and cultural background, to communicate a deeper meaning or interpretation to the audience. Smell is used as a medium in combination with other senses or even used as a subject alone.

This paper gives an overview of olfactory art and its forms: film, perfume art, scent art technology and devices, scent maps, and sculpture, with the focus on installation. The focus lies on olfaction installation in general because installation art has a more immediate impact on the audience than other art forms, in the same way olfactory art does when the audience breathes in the air of their environment, and their emotions are suddenly evoked. The audience inevitably interchanges the air with the environment where the art object is situated, which is similar to the idea of installation that requires interaction between audience, object and the surrounding.

Moreover, the nature of olfactory art is ephemeral, creating momentary experiences, just as the nature of an art installation that is temporal and occurs in a short time.

This paper examines the subconsciuospower of smell from different fields of study, olfactoy art and installations; it investigates the subconscious power of smell in experiencing installation art.

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1 SENSE OF SMELL

SENSE OF SMELL

If

human sensoria are depicted as a hierarchical pyramid, sense of vision stands at the top, followed by sense of hearing, while sense of taste and touch lie at the base. In an ancient Aristotelian world, both sense of sight and hearing could lead humanity to God via beauty and music. The two senses at the bottom were senses of animality, which one could abuse through gluttony and lust and did not lead to God. In between was sense of smell, which could not be abused, but could not lead to God either. Aristotle classified smell as the lowest of the human senses. Kant excludes smell from his aesthetics. There are textbooks on aesthetics, discussing visual beauty, aural beauty of music, taste, the tactile texture of skin, marble or fabric, but not smell. In fact, there is no aesthetics of smell in Western tradition (Synnott, 1991).

The hypothesis formed by scientists and psychologists of the 19th and 20th centuries argued that human suppression of the sense of smell was one of the characteristics of ‘civilized man’. Freud presumed that human sense of smell was replaced by the sense of sight when the human species began to walk upright, removing the nose from proximity of scent trails on the ground and increasing the visual field (Classen et al, 1994: 90). Since human olfaction ability is useless in civilized society, it has declined in importance since the beginning of modern period.

The book Aroma (Classen et al, 1994) has investigated cultural history of odors from antiquity to modernity, focusing on the Western world. In the ancient world, perfumes were far 6

more important than they are today. People used them in the form of a thick ointment or a fragrant smoke, infusing the air with scents. In fact, the word ‘perfume’ in Latin literally means ‘to smoke through’. Odors were once the tools used to divide people into different categories: the rich and the poor, city and country dwellers, or men and women. The rich could afford perfume and incense, gardens and living in well ventilated homes kept clean by slaves, while the poor could not. The countryside tends to be more fragrant than the crowded, dirty urban areas. Basic olfactory classification of women associated younger women with fragrance and old women or prostitutes with stench.

In earlier times, bad odor was believed to cause diseases.

Once a plague broke out in Europe in the 17th century, the authorities responded by burning aromatic woods in the streets to purify the atmosphere. Inhabitants enclosed themselves in their homes, in order to avoid the smell. When ventures on the street, people carried some olfactory devices to prevent them from diseases outside. One of the most popular devices was a pomander, a perforated container filled with scents that was carried by the person. People were also known to carry aromatic flowers or perfumed handkerchiefs with them. The concept of combatting the plague generated extensive anxiety about the odors of others, which cause each person to desire to remain enclosed in a private olfactory bubble.

European cities were often filthy places. Streets were places for all sorts of waste and rivers were dumped with refuse that was washed away by rain. Bad smells, which were generated primarily by organic waste, tend to be accepted as a natural part of the cycle of life. The Industrial Revolution in the 18th century made the air in the cities even worse, producing more industrial waste and smoky fog from burning coal. The chairman of the Parisian health council noted in 1832 that Paris had become an olfactory landmark of a very unpleasant sort due to the abundance of rubbish dumps around the city. ‘.. soon the sense of smell gives notice that you are approaching the first city in the world, before your eyes could see the tips of its monuments..‘ (Moléon, cited in Corbin, 1986: 115) At the end of the 18th century, there was an awareness of deodorization of bodies and the environment, which caused the use of delicate perfumes to come into fashion and increased interest in public health, respectively. Crowded 7

public spaces, especially prisons, hospitals, and barracks, became a laboratory for experiments in deodorization techniques, such as ventilation, washing and draining. It was assumed that air and water were essential for one’s health (Corbin, 1986: 89-99). The wind helped to cleanse rivers and ponds. Ordinary people also started deodorizing their private spaces and taking care of personal hygiene, which included practices, such as washing clothes, chewing herbs to freshen breath, and personal cleansing of bodies. Bathing had reappeared again in Europe, since previously it was thought to endanger one’s health. Fragrance was a therapeutic way to strengthen and stimulate mind and body.

An important discovery by Louis Pasteur in the late 19th century, revealed that it was not smell that spread disease, but germs. Bad smells were no longer thought to cause disease, but it was known to be the sign of the presence of disease.

The purpose of using fragrances in the West in the 20th century shifted from preventing infection to preventing social rejection. The widespread deodorization of public and private spaces marked the modern olfactory era.

Over the decades, the aesthetics of the sense of smell became commonplace until today. People paid more attention to odors in social situations, suppressing their bad odors with deodorants and presenting nicer scents with perfumes.

Artificial flavors were invented in the late 19th century, at first, to provide inexpensive substitutes for certain spices.

Variations on aromatherapeutic beliefs and practices can be found around the world. ___________________

The Characteristic of Smells

For the philosophers in the modern period, smells are ephemeral. Thus olfactory sensations can never provide a persistent stimulus of thought, which seems to be inversely related to the development of intelligence (Corbin, 1986: 6).

The distinctive characteristics of smell are temporal, making it the most mysterious sense among the five senses. The characteristics of smell coincide with the natural behavior of smell in the environment and in relation to humans.

Unavoidable Humans can shut their eyes to ignore unpleasant visual 8

imagery, close their ears, or avoid touching or tasting, but they cannot avoid smelling because humans breathe constantly.

Smells emanate in an omni-directional way from the source of the odor, enveloping every object in the surrounding area with its smell. One cannot simply escape from the sphere of smell by only turning their heads from the odor-emitting object. It is the only sense that cannot be muted.

Ephemeral (Diffusive and Lingering) Smells emanate, diffuse, sometimes linger in the air or disappear in a very short period of time, making the characteristics of smell particularly strong, ephemerality in particular. Odors tend to travel through diffusion and drift in random movements once released into the atmosphere.

Atmospheric conditions, such as temperature, humidity and wind direction, which are highly unpredictable in the environment, play an important role during the course of transmission of odors to olfactory receptors in controlling direction and speed. Odors are not only hard to control, but also difficult to measure in numerical values.

After being released into the air, odors tend to linger in the atmosphere. According to the report (Ghinea and Ademoye, 2011), some studies suggested that two odors emitted in sequence must be separated by at least 20 to 60 seconds in order to be clearly perceived and the average time it takes to sniff a scent typically ranges from 0.5s to 2.5s.

Spatial Proximity The invisible boundary of olfactory space cannot be seen, but the odoriferous areas can be perceived. Olfactory space is a continuous, fluid space, crisscrossed by currents; therefore, it is an ever-changing pattern. Sense of smell requires a person to be in contact with an odor in order to perceive it, just as with sense of taste and touch. It cannot be perceived from a distance, as visuals or sounds can, unless the smell is very concentrated in the air. On the other hand, smell could also be a boundary maker or a distance-maintainer (Synnott, 1991) to maintain appropriate physical proximity in social formations between people. When a person with bad body odor enters an enclosed space, the odor forms an invisible boundary, keeping other people away.

Vague Terminology While other senses have positive associations in everyday language, sense of smell does not. For example, when speaking of a person, words associated with sight, such as visionary or keen-eyed are used; with hearing, as having a 9

good ear or being a good listener; with touch, as dexterity, a light touch; with taste, as good taste. There are no equivalent terms of approval for smelling ability, except the word ‘nosy’, which has a more negative than positive connotation (Fox, 2006). Odors are often defined in terms of other senses, sour or sweet (taste), strong or week (touch) or referred to objects from which odors emanate. For example, one would describe coffee to smell like coffee. They are also described based on one’s personal reaction to the odors, such as smelling nice or nasty or neutral. There is a poverty of olfactory terminology and a lack of understanding in the nature of odors, since odors tend to be processed in a direct, non-verbal way by the brain without expression through language. Hence, to understand the role of smells in different cultures, one must go beyond language and explore the realm of practice (Classen et al, 1994: 113) because what smells foul to one person may smell fragrant to another in other cultures.

Irrational Two of the most basic functions of the sense of smell, include preventing a potential harmful chemical in the environment and giving motivation for a certain behavior. The latter function is driven by human olfactory receptors that are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is the place of emotion (Fox, 2006).

Humans respond to scent stimuli in a very unique way because no other sense is directly wired to this emotionprocessing part of the brain in the same way as smell. Smell is affected by emotions or feeling and is not controllable by rational thinking (Jütte, cited in Benn, 2011).

This makes smell the most intimate sensation, a more immediate pleasure and an intuitively powerful sense.

Moreover, smelling and sniffing are associated with animal behavior. It is seen as the sense of animality, lust, desire, and impulsiveness.

It is obvious that the power of smell subconsciously evokes human emotion to behave or to respond to something in a certain way, which secretly functions in social interaction and culture.

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2 SMELL AND THE SUBCONSCIUOSNESS

SMELL AND THE SUBCONSCIOUSNESS

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hile consciousness means there is an awareness of and a response to one’s surroundings, the subconscious is part of consciousness that is currently not fully aware but still influences one’s decisions, actions and feelings. Sense of smell has this subconscious power while the other senses do not. ‘All of the other senses, you think before you respond, but with scent, your brain responds before you think’ (Scholder, cited in Vlahos, 2007). Hence, the hidden power of olfactory sense intuitively have control over emotions, which informs certain behavior. Modifying the odors of something means having an impact on the emotional sphere that changes people’s moods, and drives human decision making (Barbara, 2006: 87-90). For this reason, the subconscious olfactory power is widely used for its placebo effect in psychological healing, and in the marketing world.

Humans can also instinctively choose mates and determine their spatial territories through their sense of smell. In short, olfactory power has an influence on triggering memory and emotion. This has been examined widely in many scientific studies.

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Healing The use of fragrance to enhance people’s psychological sense of well-being is known as ‘aromatherapy’. Inhaling certain scents extracted from natural plants affects mood in certain ways, allowing it to function as a therapy. For example, lemon scent is known for reducing anxiety, peppermint for boosting energy, and jasmine for better sleep and for use as an anti-depressant.

Throughout history, scents have been used as placebos with the purpose of calming, soothing, and healing. In Westerner’s minds, spaces with lavender scent will be perceived as aerated and clean, even when it is actually enclosed and dirty. Once during the bombing of London in the Second World War, people sprayed lavender in their bomb shelters, not only to cover up unpleasant odors, but to calm their fears.

The lavender scent evoked for them a clean and reassuring home-like setting, in contrast to the actual situation (Barbara, 2006: 93-94). This example shows that scent can sometimes be much more powerful than sight in influencing perceptions, especially when the sense of smell is in conflict with what the eyes see.

Scent is not only used as a placebo for psychological healing, but also for increasing productivity in workplaces.

It is common in Japan that companies use scents to control behaviors of their workers in order to maximize productivity.

The different scents are released at different times of the day.

For example, citrus scents are used to stimulate the workers in the morning and after lunch, wood scents are used to relieve tiredness at midday and in the evening (Classen et al, 1994: 196). The Japanese company, Shimizu, reveals that piped-in scents help their workers concentrate and reported that the workers, who inhaled a lemon aroma made 54 percent fewer errors than those who sniffed normal air (Griffin, 1993).

Marketing At the present, the way smell is associated with subconsciousness has been studied more often in the area of marketing than in other fields. Smell is a marketer’s dream, as it is known for playing directly to the consumer’s emotions.

It has a direct connection to the parts of the brain that control memory, mood and emotions. Marketers make use of smell in boosting the attractiveness of a product, arousing the shopper’s desire to make purchases in retail stores, and create brand identities. However, the scent preferences used in marketing cannot be generic and universal. They depend on culture and generation of the consumers (Vlahos, 2007).

For example, vanilla is the most preferred scent of Americans, 15

but Indians love sandalwood scents. People born before 1930 prefer natural smells, like that of grass and horses, while people born after 11930 prefer synthetic smells, like Play-Doh and SweeTARTS candies.

Many studies have shown that consumers generally prefer scented products to unscented ones. Particularly when the right scent is added to the product, the product will be perceived as superior in quality. When lemon scent was added to Joy detergent in 1966, it gave the consumer the impression that Joy had increased cleaning power.

Consumers unconsciously associated the lemon scent with grease-cutting ability, even though the lemon scent did not change the chemical substance of the detergent (Classen et al, 1994: 193). In another similar example, scents were added to shampoo to test its effect on the reception of the product. A shampoo, which had initially been ranked as mediocre based on its performance in an initial test, was later ranked in first place after changing its fragrance. Consumers stated that the new shampoo was easier to rinse out, foamed better and left their hair more lustrous and glossy (Jellinek, cited in Classe, 1994).

In contrast, adding the wrong scent to a product results in negative responses. In one consumer test, pine fragranced was added to facial tissues, since it was considered a fresh and clean scent. However, the tissues were considered harsh and rough because pine fragrance is associated with these words, which are undesirable qualities for facial tissues.

Candy scents rated as pleasing and fresh received a negative response when added to toothpaste, as they are associated with being bad for your teeth (Ibid). These experiments have proved that olfactory psychology plays an important role when consumers judge the effectiveness of a product, even though the added scent has no direct effect on the product performance.

Alan Hirsch, a neurologist who has investigated the connection between environmental scents and the inclination to spend money, conducted a well-known experiment on Nike shoes in 1993. Thirty-five people examined two identical pairs of Nike running shoes in two identical rooms, but one was perfumed with a floral scent, while the other was not.

Each person had 30 seconds to examine the shoes. The result showed that 84% of them were more likely to buy the shoes in the scented room, and 10% of those who were affected by the scent estimated the value of that pair to be $10.83 higher than the other pair (Corbett, 1994: 95). This shows that sense 16

of smell intuitively persuades people to make decisions, subconsciously causing them to think that one product is superior than the other, even though they are identical.

Retailers combine visual, tactile and intangible elements like smell, to create an immersive brand experience, as well as to influence shopper behavior. Scent in retail stores tends to cause shoppers to linger longer, compared to those without scents. Shoppers in stores with scents also perceive that they have spent less time shopping than they actually have (Vlahos, 2007). Scent marketers use different scents to evoke different emotions in different parts of department stores.

Department store in New York, Bloomingdale’s, uses coconut scents in the swimwear department for a tropical paradise feel, lilac in the lingerie department for a sensual appeal, and baby powder in the infant wear department (Scentair, 2017).

Real estate businesses also diffuse scents in their showrooms, using scents, such as freshly baked apple pie or cookies in the kitchen, to make a house feel more like a home. Not only retail stores use scents to boost their selling power. Casinos also apply this strategy to rouse the gambler’s emotions. In another study Hirsch found that gamblers at a casino in Las Vegas poured 45% more money into scented slot machines than they did into scent-free machines. Certain marketing studies in the last several decades have proved that scent marketing can be as powerful as visual marketing, and sometimes even more powerful.

Mating People form deep emotional bonds to one another by touching and, especially smelling each other. Infants recognize odors of their mothers soon after birth and are able to locate their mother’s nipples. Adults can also identify their children or spouses by using scent alone. Many recent studies show that sense of smell is more of an essential cue in human mate choice than previously thought. The well-known Sweaty T-shirt experiment led by a biological researcher, Claus Wedekind, in 1995, tested women’s sensitivity to male odors.

The volunteers consisted of 49 women and 44 men, selected for variety of MHC1 gene types. Each man wore a clean t-shirt without deodorant, cologne or perfume for two nights and returned to the scientists. The t-shirts were each put into an identical box. Women were asked to sniff those boxes and give ratings for intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness. The results showed that women were most attracted to the scents of t-shirts worn by men, whose MHC genes were different from their own. There are two reasons for this: firstly, parents with more diverse MHC genes will give rise to offspring 17

with better immune systems, and secondly, it helps to avoid inbreeding (Carpenter, 2002).

The concept of smelling potential mates has also been adapted into an online dating site, which invites people to find new connections using only their olfactory intuitions.

The website Smell.dating is a platform for exchanging worn t-shirts. Subscribers are given a t-shirt to wear for three days and three nights without deodorant and then sent it back.

They also receive swatches of t-shirts worn by a selection of other individuals. If they like the smell of a person and vice versa, the website will facilitate an exchange of contact information. This smell dating site by Tega Brain (Brain, 2016) and Sam Lavigne eliminates visual information like appearance, social class, age, culture or even sex, which are typical parameters for other dating services, and restores people’s molecular intuition to give them a better chance of finding the right partner across the world.

It has been known that animals are drawn to mates of the same species via chemical signals, or pheromones. In fact, even though humans, who are not known for a particularly good sense of smell, can also send and receive subconscious scent signals. According to the above studies, this is why some people are attracted to a person’s particular scent.

Marking Territory Humans, who live in environments, where vision is restricted, such as dense forests, value the importance of smell as a means of spatial orientation and localization. Forest dwellers know that smell can give them knowledge of things the eyes cannot see. The Desana of the Amazon rainforest of Columbia only inhabit the territory marked by their tribal odor and tribal feelings. The territory is marked by scent trails laid down by the people who live there, in the same way that animals mark their territories with scent. Each tribe emits a unique odor so that each tribal territory has a characteristic scent. The Desana not only sniff the odors of humans, but they also determine the parameters of their environment by sniffing plants and animals. Different areas of the jungle have distinctive odors, such as the deep or open forest. Animals living there also have their own distinct smell. For example, deep forest animals, such as jaguars, give off the unpleasant, musky smell of the deep forest, while animals living in open spaces give off pleasant, sweet smells of the open forest.

Therefore, the smellscape of the forest consists of a variety of distinct olfactory zones criss-crossed by the different scent trails of people, animals and plants which live in them 18

(Classen et al, 1994:97).

The Andamanese, who live in the Andaman islands, provide another example of using sense of smell to understand environment and space. The olfactory definition of space by the Andamanese, is determined by their surroundings, where the smell of the salty sea and the fragrance of flowers in the jungle meet. Their olfactory landscapes are not a fixed structure, but rather a highly fluid pattern that can shift and change according to atmospheric conditions. While most people in the West conceive of space as a static area within which events occur, the Andamanese experience and conceptualize the space of the village as fluctuating over time.

Thus, the space of the village can be more or less expansive, depending on the presence of strong-smelling substance in the village such as, pig’s meat, heat, or strength of the winds (Ibid: 98-99).

Triggering Memory and Emotion The effect of smells on memory, mood and emotion has become the subject of scientific investigation. Everyone, at least once, has experienced the vivid recollection of individuals, spaces and events in the past, triggered by the use of the olfactory sense (Benn, 2011: 241). In fact, the human ability to remember odors is much better than their ability to remember visual stimuli or auditory stimuli (Larsson, cited in Laska, 2011), which builds a connection between the present and earlier periods in life. Smelling an article of clothing belonging to a person will often give a much stronger impression of that person’s presence than seeing the pieces of clothing would (Classen et al, 1994: 116).

In one study, the HCI2 researchers (Obrist et al, 2014) collected stories from 439 participants who described their memorable smell experiences through an online platform and categorized them. There are 10 main categories, showing how the subconscious power of smell influences people’s thoughts and actions. This includes: smells associated with the past (e.g. memory of loved ones, places, life events) even without actual smell stimulus in the present, smells triggering memory (e.g. the smell of chocolate cookies as sudden a reminder of grandma), smells creating desire for more (e.g. food triggers appetite, scents of people triggering attractiveness), smells affecting social interaction (e.g.bad breath), smell stimulating changes in mood, attitude and behavior. Afterward, the HCI researchers suggested ideas for technological implications using smell categories as design stimuli.

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Some examples of stories about smells associated with memory and emotion, taken from Obrist’s research and other sources, are listed below.

Long-lasting memory of smell: ‘My guide warned me ahead of the time that it was going to be a little foul in there, but nothing could have prepared me for the obscenely acrid stench of hundreds of men crammed into every available space of the jail, right down to windowless storage rooms converted into more cells. … For days afterwards, I couldn’t shake the smell…. There weren’t enough showers to take it away. It’s been several years since then, and my memory of that smell is just a strong as ever.’ (Obrist, 2014: #604).

Smell triggers memory: ‘Several years ago I was shopping at Macy’s in New York when suddenly I smelled something familiar, and I immediately thought of my childhood doll Lucy.

You see, I had not thought about Lucy for years, much less that Lucy had been my favorite doll back when I was growing up in Spain. Looking around, I realized that I was in the store’s toy section and that I was very close to a stand of dolls. Out of curiosity, I reached out for one of the dolls. On the doll’s box it said: “Made in Spain”.’ (Rodriguez-Gil, 2004).

The long-term memory of odors in the past influences behavior in the future. For example, if someone consumes a food that causes nausea or vomiting in the past, later, simply smelling the odor of this food can induce a very long-lasting aversion to this food. However, human reactions to odors are quite clearly based on emotional associations, whether they may be caused by a like or dislike of the particular odor. In one experiment (Martinec, 2015), has shown that people tend to like smells more when they have knowledge of an odor’s identity based on prior experiences. People rate smells more positively when they are able to identify them correctly. There are fragrances that are universally perceived as pleasant, such as vanilla and lavender, which trigger positive emotions. The smell of vanilla, with its comforting milky warmth, is often associated with happy childhood memories (Fox, 2006).

The special power of sense of smell is not only fascinating and investigated by people in the medical field, marketers, 20

cultural historians, or scientists, it has become a subject of interest in the art world since the last century. As the odors offer artists more powerful tools to both reinforce the experience and to also create an illusive experience unattainable in other senses, it has recently become many artists’ new favorite subject and medium.

_____________________________________________________ NOTE: 1. MHC = Major Histocompatibility Complex is one of the immune system’s key markers of identity.

2. HCI = Human-Computer Interaction 21

3 OLFACTORY ART

OLFACTORY ART

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reek philosophy believes sight and hearing are the only aesthetic senses, in the same way that Modern aesthetics regards these two senses as the only senses able to be transformed into art. The haptic sense, olfactory sense, and sense of gustatory have been neglected in the history of aesthetics and, therefore, never achieved the status of art objects (Diaconu, 2006). The first argument for this states that the sensory data from secondary or lower senses (touch, smell, taste) are so intertwined and interconnected that they form the oral sense. Second, they deal with ephemeral stimuli and consume their objects, specially smell, which is invisible and diffusive. Moreover, it is difficult to prove the existence of these art forms, neither by visual nor verbal form because of the vague terminology used to describe their experience and qualities. When trying to describe smell, one might describe a smell in interrelation with other sensory codes, mainly borrow from terms of taste, or refer to the things from which they emanate. The smell of this would be an example of this.

However, in the age of highly developed visual and acoustic media, artists started to move toward exploration sense of smell. The earliest occurrences of olfactory art occurred at the beginning of the modern art movement. In 1938, Marcel Duchamp’s installation, Exposition internationale du surréalisme, released the scent of roasting coffee within the exhibition space. It is considered as true olfactory art, where the work could actually be smelled and felt. However, there was no evidence of the coffee machine at the exposition, but it is believed it could been a possible allusion to Duchamp’s small painting, Coffee Mill from 1910 (Hopkins, 2014).

Duchamp sought other methods of expression, instead of only focusing on visual art as the other artists did at that time, he opened up the use of other senses in his artworks particularly utilizing sense of smell. After the occurrence of Marcel Duchamp’s very first olfactory art installation, 24

smell in art has continued to flourish among the Fluxus and Arte Povera artists of the sixties. Fluxus is an international avant-garde interdisciplinary group of artists, designers, composers and poets, whose works are highly experimental focusing on other 4 dimensional art forms, including, aural, optic, olfactory, epithelial and tactile art (Ran, 2009: 183). Arte Povera was also a movement that shared the same focus as the Fluxus group.

Olfactory art is a contemporary art form related to olfaction, using smell as a medium. The artists aim to engage the unique characteristics of olfactory perception through investigation, inquiry, provocation, and reveal them in ways that visual art cannot. This is possible because olfaction links directly with a chemical connection in the brain. The complex relationship of human sense of smell, nature, experience and cultural background influences one’s perception of smell and powerfully associates it with emotion and memory. By employing powerful characteristics of smell, artists are able to transport the audience to another spot, and are able to communicate a deeper meaning or even open their works to an individual’s personal interpretation. As Andy Warhol wrote in ‘From A to Be and BackAgain’ in 1975, odor is really a means of transportation. Sight, hearing, touch and taste are not powerful enough to transport you entirely to another spot. In this sense, odors are extraordinary vehicles for traveling through both place and time (Barbara, 2006: 208).

Since the end of the 20th century, olfactory art is usually used in combination with other media especially visual and/or sound. Over the past few decades, smell has become more valued as ‘part of the work of art’ or as ‘smell as the work of art’ in itself (De Cupere, 2014). Peter de Cupere, who wrote Olfactory Art Manifest in 2014, intends to bring attention to olfactory art as a new art movement. The word ‘Olfactism’ has been introduced. He explained, ‘Olfactism as when we talk about art in which smell is used as a medium and is part of the work or whether the smell in itself is a piece of art. A visual representation is nevertheless also possible if it is clear that it concerns smell concepts and/or works of art in which smell is context or gives context.’ (Ibid).

According to de Cupere’s manifest, olfactory art can be presented in various forms, as long as smell is the essential part of the work and it qualifies as Olfactism.

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Olfactory Movie In the early 1900s, the use of scent in conjunction with film was an early attempt to create an olfactory movie. The use of scents in movies was utilized by the theatre owners and were not part of the directors’ production. It turned out that smell distracted the audience, making it more difficult for them to focus on the film. Starting in the mid-1950s, the attempt to invent new virtual reality technology by adding smell along with movie plots (visual and sound) began to be more gradually developed. The intent of this was to create a more immersive movie-going experience. In the 1960 film, Scent of Mystery, Hans Laube’s Smell-O-Vision machine was used for the first time to release scents in synchronization with actions in the film. The ‘smell brain’ was used to release scents, which was comprised of a series of perfume containers arranged in the order that they would be released.

They were linked in a belt wound around a motorized reel.

Once the film footage rolled through the movie projector, markers on it cued the brain. The container whirred into position and needles pierced membranes on the containers to release scents at the right moment. Electric fans blew the scents through individual vent pipes, located underneath each seat in the theatre. Even the cost of outfitting the theatre to accommodate the system was very high. Scent of Mystery was the first film in which smell was integral to the plot, providing clues to the audience. For example, the killer is identified by the smell of his pipe tobacco.

In fact, there was another earlier form of Smell-O-Vision called Scentovision also invented by Laube in 1939 for the World’s Fair in New York. Laube claimed that the system could produce odors as quickly and easily as the soundtrack of a film produces sound, since the scent pipes connected to individual seats in the theatre. It allows for the timing and amount to be carefully controlled by the control board.

However, the system failed to take off.

With inspiration from Smell-O-Vision, the film director, John Waters, introduced Odorama, using scratch and sniff cards as a gimmick for his film, Polyester in 1981. The scratch and sniff card was given to the audience before the show in the same manner paper 3D glasses are distributed today. The card contained ten spots, numbered from 1 to 10, with different smells, e.g. scent of flowers, pizza, glue, gas, grass and feces.

When a number flashed on the screen, this cued the audience to scratch and sniff the appropriate spot. This method solved the problems of Smell-O-Vision but did not gain widespread usage in other films. It was only duplicated our times 26

(Top) Hans Laube.

Smell-O-Vision (1960).

(Middle) John Waters.

Odorama (1981).

Scratch-and-sniff card for the movie, Polyester (Below) Wolfgang Georgsdorf.

Smeller 2.0 (2016).

The scent machine in Osmodrama Festival, Berlin

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thereafter. Mostly, the cards were distributed with magazines for children or science TV programs, under different names e.g. ‘Aromavision’, ‘Aromascope’ As a result of technological advancement, the latest practice of using scent in films was took place during the Osmodrama Festival in Berlin 2016. Osmodrama is the art of time-based olfactory sequences via a device called Smeller 2.0, developed

by Wolfgang Georgsdorf and his team. The device can control odor sequences and their release length without mixing each odor or allowing them to linger. The festival employed Smeller 2.0 to create smell narratives in conjunction with different modalities: smell storytelling alone, smell and sound narrative (with spoken word and music), and smell and visual narrative (with dance, theatre, film). For example, Georgsdorf composed a smell narrative for the film, Home from Home, for which Edgar Rtiz directed both the film and smell compositions. The composed smell and the film brought the audience back in time to mid-1900s poverty and starvation, through using the odor of grasslands, dirt, horses, old houses, etc.., enabling the audience to breathe in the story and to be the part of it.

The audience being immersed in the film is the ultimate dream for a film director. In conclusion, the artists who have worked with smell and film from the early 20th century to the present, intend to explore an alternative way of experiencing the film by using smell, in conjunction with sounds and visuals, as smell is the most powerful sense in triggering emotion. In most cases, the use of smell in a movie, even with the film director’s intention, functioned as a tool to create a more immersive experience in the film, without it serving as the main subject in itself.

Perfume art Perfume art in this context conducts an examination on the art of distilling, collecting, mixing, and reproducing odors. Sissel Tolaas, a scent artist, chemist and researcher, has a personal library of 7,000 recreated smells and 2,500 molecules, which she has created over the course of 7 years and is comprised of different scents from all over the world. With technology supported by International Flavors & Fragrance Inc. (IFF), her laboratory can extract odors from physical objects and preserve them in a form similar to perfume. The goal of the lab is to redefine existing notions about noses, smells and the act of smelling and creates a perfect context in which to further develop the archive of smell (Tolaas, 2017). Her smell archive has been in operating since 1990. Each smell emits from 28

Sissel Tolaas was sitting in her Berlin Laboratory (2016).

Photography by Jim Erye

‘something’ and the ‘something’ is hermetically preserved and canned in aluminum boxes. Two devices have been developed to help preserve smell. The first device removes all oxygen from the can to isolate the smell, so that the pure smell lasts much longer. The second device allows the smell to be sampled at anytime by pumping a scent into a separate chamber inside the box and then blowing it out through a ventilator. The archive of molecules and technology in the laboratory is not only for scent collection, but they are also converted into Tolaas’s art installations. In The FEAR of smell - the smell of FEAR, scents of sweat that were extracted from the perspiration of 21 men when exposed to fear-inducing stimuli, were infused and mixed into wall paint through micro-encapsulation technology. The wall released odors when the paint was rubbed or scratched.

Digital Scent Technology art works From the study of perfume art, artists and scientists have learned how to collect, mix, and reproduce smell in chemical forms. This category focuses on devices and technologies related to olfactory art that can mix, control and release smell.

The scent organ, Smell 2.0 was introduced in Osmodrama. The inventor, Wolfgang Georgsdorf, claims his device is a very powerful machine that can mix and release thousands of odors through precise electronic control from 64 source chambers and the odors from the machine are realistic. It can control the length and time of the release of smell (Georgsdorf, 2016).

The website Smeller.net says the machine released smell in sequences through the organ pipes protruding into the room, 29

which diffused scents in a particular order, as programmed.

The nozzles distributed at regular intervals around the room blow fresh air into the room, which helps to transport the scents throughout the entire space, and also suck up the fragrance after it has been diffused to avoid lingering scents before the next scent arrives. The control software runs on a conventional computer, functioning similarly to the sampling software used in music and sound processing. The machine and its set-up environment have great potential for the world of olfactory art and communication to the general public.

While most augmented realities rely on sight and sound, the research team at University of Tokyo created Meta Cookie, a system of augmented gustation. In general, the concept of augmented reality is a real-time experience with the physical real world, in which computer-generated virtual imagery is used to alter a person’s perception. As sense of taste relies significantly on other senses, in particular sight and smell, the team invented an augmented reality cookie to examine if humans can perceive various tastes without changing chemical substances. Rather, they changed only visual and olfactory information. The system works with sight and smell, trying to manipulate users’ perceptions of the virtual taste of a cookie. The users, who are wearing helmet-goggle gear were asked to eat one plain, tasteless cookie. The helmet then shows an image of one type of cookie and releases a scent to the users. They see the image and smell the scent of a chocolate chip cookie, then the scent is changed to seven other scents. The users were asked to tell what type of cookie they received, after they tried each cookie. The results proved that a person’s perception of taste of cookie could be augmented by using real texture of cookie with different visuals and smell during the experiment.

Olfactory Device According to Peter de Cupere’s olfactory art manifest, olfactory device refers to ‘a device with the purpose to make the spectator olfactory conscious or to give a certain context in which is referenced to the smell or as a device is used to support the smelling’ (De Cupere, 2014). While smell is normally an afterthought of exploring one’s surrounding, de Cupere introduced a new device to bring smell into consciousness when exploring a particular space. His Blind Smell Stick (2012) utilized the idea of a walking stick for blind people and turned it into an olfactory aid. The stick is able to detect smells through the bulb, embedded with holes at the bottom. By pointing the bottom of the stick at the objects, the smells from objects reach the person’s nose after they 30

(Top) Takuji Narumi, Takashi Kajinami, Tomohiro Tanikawa Michitaka Hirose Meta Cookie (2010).

The University of Tokyo.

(Bottom) Peter De Cupere, The Blind Smell Stick (2012).

31

Kate McLean.

Smellmap of Amsterdam (2013).

32

run through a special tube with the use of mini ventilators, heating devices and filters. He added the dark goggles as an option to allow the person to focus on only sniffing, but also gave them the option to sniff and to look at the objects.

Blind Smell Stick exaggerates human olfactory abilities. It not only aims to offer new possibilities to experience cities and different environments through the power of smell, but also tries to help blind people find their way more easily.

Smell Map of Cities The spirit of a city is not made up of physical constructs, but rather, of odors. Different local odors on each corner of the streets create an olfactory topography, enabling the inhabitants to conceptualize and recognize their environment by smelling during their daily walks through the city. For example, flowering Linden trees not only serve as the name one of the biggest promenades in Berlin, they likely also provide inhabitants with a scent marker in early summer (Bendix, 2001 :218-210).

Smell maps of cities refer to a record and creation of smell consciousness of a particular place in the form of words or visualizations. A graphic designer and urban smellscape researcher, Kate McLean, has built up a catalog of smells of the cities she visits and tried to visualize them across entire cities. Her research has included smell maps of Amsterdam, London, Barcelona, etc. Her famous Smellmap of Amsterdam was recorded in Spring 2013 by 44 people undertaking 10 smellwalks over period of 4 windy days. McLean collected the written descriptions from smellwalkers and transcribed them into symbols on digital or physical maps. Colorful dots mark the origins of the smells, concentric circles indicate their range and the warped contours allude to potential smell drift from wind direction (McLean, 2014). While conventional maps are accurate diagrammatic representations of physical earth surface, McLean’s maps emphasize on transient and ephemeral nature of the smellscape, as a result from a destructive and a productive force of the wind. The way McLean makes urban smell maps is similar to how Andamanese perceive and conceptualize the space of their villages: smell is moving and fluctuating over time.

Olfactory Sculpture One of the widely used themes in olfactory sculptures from Fluxus focused on natural processes,changing odors of organic materials, especially stink, and its effects through time. For example, in Staple Cheese (A Race) by Dieter Roth in 1970, the artist filled 37 suitcases with cheese and left them 33

open on the floor. After a few days, the over powering smell attracted flies making it impossible to enter the room, as the artist intended. Jan Fabre’s The Legs of Reason Skinned (2000), used 8,000 slices of ham to cover eight larger pillars at the entrance to the exhibition of Ghent University and wrapped it by plastic for three months, aiming to turn the artwork into a living sculpture by attracting the flies and worms to the rotten meat (Meat Sculpture, 2000).

(Left) Dieter Roth.

Staple Cheese (A Race) (1970).

Eugenia ButlerGallery, Los Angeles.

Photograpy by Eugenia P. Butler Estate

The other themes of olfactory sculptures are varied. For example, the theme tends to recall memory, such as Jannis Kounellis’s Unititled (1969) in Naples, used of coffee hanging sculpture to recall travel and transportation of goods, as Naples is a port city characterized by strong scent of coffee.

Another work using smell as a metaphor for political action is Che Fare? (What is to be done?) by Mario Merz (1968).

The neon title refers to Lenin’s 1912 speech about role of the intellectual in the revolutionary process. The neon was placed in a fish-skillet filled with wax. When the neon was heated, the wax diffused its scent to signify a non-violent political action, since the neon passively sitting in a pot, has a gradual effect (Christove-Bakargiev, 1999: 34).

(Right) Jan Fabre.

The Legs of Reason Skinned (2000).

University of Ghent, Belgium.

Photography by S.M.A.K.

Olfactory Installation The larger scale of olfactory sculptures is sometimes ambiguous with olfactory installation art. This is often the case, as the nature of olfactory art requires the existence of an audience to complete the work, which is similar to installation art. In general, the objectives behind smell sculpture and smell installation art are varied. They are open for imagination and interpretation. However, installation art offers a better tool to create a powerful intense experience in olfactory art. The complex ideas of olfactory installation art will be discussed in the next chapter.

(Bottom) Mario Merz Che Fare? (1968).

Tate and National Galleries of Scotland

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35

4 OLFACTORY ART INSTALLATION

OLFACTORY ART INSTALLATION

G

eneral ideas about installation works focus on the relationship between objects, viewers and their context, within temporal-spatial conditions implicit in the work.

Installation works can identify and create space, transform space, activate, intervene or inhabit space through multisensory stimuli, such as visual, aura, tactile, kinetic, and olfactory (Ran, 2009: 140, 210). It arouses viewer awareness, encouraging them not only to be an observer, but a participant, who make one’s own decision on how and where to interact with the artworks and to gain knowledge about the work through their movements. According to Duchamp’s approach toward installation art, the work must be ‘complete’ by the viewer, compelling the viewer to interact with their surroundings (Ibid: 64). Many installations, especially sitespecific installations, are designed for a particular space.

These works are unlikely to be single objects, but assemblies of different objects, or could contain no object at all, but a spatial experience (Rosenthal, 2003: 26). The environment becomes as equally as important as the object because no object exists without environment; therefore, the object itself can expand to a degree, where it becomes its own environment (Kiesler, cited in Ran, 2009: 76) 38

Installation art has become the most predominant mode of expression in the modern world, as it offers the most profound contact with reality. This epitomizes the artist’s eternal quest for greater realism, through using sensory overload and overwhelming the audience. The very nature of installation art gives the artist an opportunity to explore cross-disciplinary art and hybridization of sensual perception to achieve artist’s intentions. It projects a more immediate impact on a contemporary audience than conventional media (Rosenthal, 2003: 25, 86), in the same way that olfactory art has an immediate effect on the emotional response of the viewers once they breath the air in the space.

Moreover, painting and sculpture tend to freeze time, and perhaps suggest something eternal. Installation deals with the present moment, allowing viewers to experience temporal flow and spatial awareness (Rosenthal, 2003: 27).

The unique qualities of installation art consist of ephemeral characteristic, and their creation of a fleeting and nonlinear momentary experience for the viewers. It is similar to characteristics of olfactory art, where the smell occurs and is diffused in a short time.

Perhaps, almost all forms of olfactory art can be considered installation art, in the sense that the viewers will always interact with the object and the environment by breathing and exchanging the air with the scent of the surrounding, which could also transform viewer perceptions toward the space to some extent.

There are hundreds of olfactory art installations experimenting with the complex connection between smell, perception and memory. Some are inspired by scientific research, experimenting with viewer behaviors in art installations. Some projects utilize the powerful emotional potential of smell in transporting viewers to places of deeply felt meaning - free of language (Nalls, 2010). The instrumental analysis of olfactory art installations focuses on the purpose of which the work is intended to serve, and its expected effect on the viewer. The artistic research on the subject is categorized according to this type of analysis.

Immersive Experience The advantage of the digital scent technology from Smeller 2.0, the world’s first electronic olfactory organ, developed to control odor sequences for the Osmodrama Festival in Berlin in 2016, is a successful example of olfactory installation, as it has the ability to immerse the audience into the main subject of the work, its smell. The device creates scent compositions 39

to narrate entire stories using only scent or it can combine with other art forms: sound effects, audio installations, music performances, or films (see Smell Movie). The audience enters a temporary white tent inside St. Johannes church where Smeller 2.0 is hidden behind a perforated steel wall on one side of the tent, forming a temporary mini theater.

The audience sits on the chairs facing the screen at the front, while the scent diffusion device is positioned at the back of the room and the nozzle systems around the room help scent to reach the audience’s noses and to clear the scent before the next scent note arrives. The installation setup and this technology allow artists not to be worry about the practicality of releasing and controlling smell. They can focus more on creating an overwhelming experience for the audience with an extra layer of sensory perception: smell.

There are attempts to create new ways of experiencing paintings in museums. Tate Sensorium (2015), an exhibition as part of Tate Britain, inspired visitors to experience four works by the 20th century painters in a completely immersive way by using three of their senses - sound, taste and touch. The idea is derived from the way human senses work together.

‘While painters obviously work on a visual medium, maybe when they were inspired by non-visual things’ said the multimedia producer for Tate Media. For example, the chocolates with a deep, smoky scent were placed in front of Francis Bacon’s Figure in a Landscape (1945) painting The work itself has a multitude of interpretations. Viewers may recognize the chocolate, but once they taste it, it does not taste like chocolate, which highlights some characteristics from the work. The gritty texture of the chocolate also reinforces the harshness of the city in the painting (Clark, 2015).

One architect who uses sense as a design tool, Peter Zumthor, concentrates more on atmosphere than architecture alone. For him, an atmosphere is an experience, which can be perceived without being physically present in a place.

‘We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility - a form of perception that works incredibly quickly, and which we humans evidently need to help us survive.’ (Zumthor, 2006: 13).

To stir emotional sensibility, sensory inputs such as, light, sound, temperature and, odor are taken into consideration.

Many of his works focus on material presence. For example, he focuses on how materials behave in the space under different temperatures. The Swiss Pavilion at the Hannover 40

(Top) A woman eats a chocolate in front of Francis Beacon’s Figure in a Landscape (1945) at Tate Sensorium (2015), Britian. Photography

by Alastair Grant (Bottom) Peter Zumthor.

The Swiss Pavilion at Hannover Expo (2000).

Photography by Thomas Flechtner

41

expo (2000) consists of 45,000 boards and 2,800 cubic meters of unseasoned larch and Douglas pine from Swiss forests, so visitors can feel the coolness of a forest on a hot day, and feel warmer inside on a cool day. The unseasoned woods rich in sap and resins release scents into the air, giving visitors the sense of being in the woods and mountains, which are iconic of Switzerland (Barbara, 2006: 157-158).

Recreation / Reproduction The art of sampling, analyzing, synthesizing and reproducing airborne characteristics from the understanding of perfume art, provides great opportunities for smell reproduction in installation art. The reproduction of smell intends to record odors of particular events or places, similar to the way photography and video record memory in a visual form.

The artists imitate the odor of one place, which could be considered out of context in that particular location, or imitate smell of particular events in the past, to be smelled in the future. Tolaas, an artist and researcher, who works with collecting and preserving smell, reproduces the olfactory experience of cities, such as Cape Town, Detroit, Shanghai and other metropolises, as well as olfactory experiences of specific events in history for art museums, such as the stench of a World War I battlefield for the German Military Museum in Dresden, or a smell of fear for MIT’s List Visual Arts Center.

Famous Deaths (2015), an installation by Frederik Duerinck and Marcel Brakel, reconstructs the very last moments in the lives of famous people through sound and scent. Visitors experience the scenarios leading up to the death of John F. Kennedy, Lady Diana, Whitney Houston and Gaddafi in the first person perspective. By taking away any visual keys, the visitor is allowed to experience these events more intensely, as the tragic deaths of famous people settles in people’s collective memory. Scent plays a crucial role in the formation of these memories. The installation consists of four mortuary freezers, accompanying each story. Visitors enter one of the freezers and are immersed in a completely dark isolated environment, surrounded by a in 4-minute soundscapes and scents documentary. For example, the scent scenario of autumn wind, freshly mown grass, the leather seats, the perfume of Jackie Kennedy, and suddenly the penetrating scent of blood and gunpowder, gives visitors an intimate and personal experience of JFK’s death.

Apart from the scent reproduction of the events, there are installations recreating air or weather of a city to display in 42

another city. Airquarium (2004) by students from Oslo Art Academy takes real-time weather data from a Shanghai weather station to simulate the installation in Oslo Contemporary Art Museum. The two Airquarium bubbles, which visitors can put their heads inside, simulate the feeling of wind, and the other of humidity. The use of smelling air by putting one’s head inside a bubble also appears in the work of Hilda Kozàri’s AIR, Smell of Helsinki, Budapest and Paris (2003) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. The installation represents the artist’s recollections and experiences from three different cities, related to the artist’s biography, Helsinki, Budapest, and Paris, through using the senses of sight, sound, and smell. The video images are projected slightly out of focus and transparent, like air, as they represent artist’s half-forgotten memories. The insubstantial and airy images are more similar to scent than a concrete record of visual information. In this case, sense of smell is accurately composed, almost object-like in its ability to be sensed (Diaconu, 2011: 262-265). A perfume designer, Bertrand Duchaufour, took qualifying words and descriptive images from Kozari to directly translate the atmosphere of each city into scent. The impression of pollution created by combination of several effects. For example, juniper tar oil was used to give a smoky scent, nutmeg and synthetic compounds representing gasoline, made of the oily, greasy smell of a garage (Sauma, 2008).

The other olfactory installation that shares a realistic sensibility with AIR is U-deur (2000). Both works incorporate a broad range of olfactory panorama in capital cities: climate, geography, industry, pollution and everyday cultural life of the people (Diaconu, 2011: 262-265). U-deur by Helgard Haug synthesized the smell of Berlin’s U2 Alexanderplatz subway station, and bottled it in vials available in a vending machine, also located in the station. A vending machine installed for a period of a year from June 2000, offered commuters the opportunity to purchase and carry a portable vial of a specific odor-landscape with them anywhere. When they open the vial and sniff the scent, they are hypothetically transported back to the time and place when they were at the station (Ibid). Haug wrote, ‘After leaving this place, this here and this now, it is possible through the Perfume to re-enter this realm, to relieve, and to remember’. U-deur is not only a memory souvenir but also a tool used to escape from reality, in the same way that people in the nineteenth century carried a ‘smell flask’ in their pockets to prevent diseases caused by bad smell from others. The idea of portable scent vial of U-deur is also comparable to headphones or portable sound 43

(Top) Frederik Duerinck and Marcel Brakel.

Famouse Deaths (2015) Museum Villa Rot in Burgrieden Rot, Germany.

Photography by Paul van ‘t Hullenaar (Middle) Sissel Tolaas The FEAR of smell - the smell of FEAR at MIT’s List Visual Art Center (2006).

(Bottom) Hilda Kozàri.

AIR, Smell of Helsinki, Budapest and Paris (2003). Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki Photography by Pirje Mykkänen

44

1

The project by a group of students from Oslo Art Academy: Laura Beloff, Svarovski, Johannisson, Larsen, Oledal, Storm, Pajchel.

Airquarium (2004).

Oslo Contemporary Art Museum.

Photography by (Top) Oslo Contemporary Art Museum and (Below) Framework: The Finnish Art Review 45

(Top) Helgard Haug.

U-deur (2000) Vending Machine at U2 Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

(Left) Jorge Otero-Pailos An Olfactory Archive: 1738-1969 (2014).

California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

(Right) Peter De Cupere Touch and Smell the Colours of this World.

(2014). Antwerp.

46

equipment that allows one to decide their own soundscapes, covering their real urban experience with sounds, while U-deur offers a different smell than would otherwise be experienced in the current environment.

The small-scale version of the scent reproduction of a city can be found in the smell reproduction of architecture. An Olfactory Archive: 1738-1969 (2014) is the first exhibition devoted to the reconstruction and preservation of smells, specific to particular eras and buildings throughout history.

Jorge Otero-Pailos created an olfactory reproduction of the Philip Johnson house with scents from its initial completion in 1949, including the scents of new leather, wood lacquer, cement and fresh plaster, and its scents in the late 1960s, when the porous ceiling had become soaked with the smell of cigarettes, tobacco aged leather and burnt logs. The exhibition presents alternative ways to interpret the history of space through scent, providing the missing dimension of experience that photography could never reproduce (Ehly, 2014).

Examination of Smell and Color McLean’s city smell maps use colorful visual interpretations of smell activity in a certain spot and display how that smell moves. Smell color was inspired by the city’s visual landscape, recalled through photographs of the city’s infrastructure, architectural detailing and materials, flora and sky (McLean, 2014). Take smellmap of Amsterdam for example, she associates newly cut grass in the park with green color, so a green dot is on the map to represent its source. Around the dot are contour lines with the same color that show the strength or the range of that newly cut grass smell. The map legend is red to represent an explosion of flower scents, lemon-green for leafy fresh rain, light blue for a canal, etc.

Synesthesia studies have proven that human senses relate to and support each other, describing how human senses work together. Seeing a color may evoke other sensations such as smell and taste. The installation by De Cupere, Touch and Smell the Colours of this World (2014), examines scent in relation to color, and how they are related to each other. A series of poster-sized paper, painted in different colors and scented with different easily recognizable smells, were mounted onto one of the building’s walls on a street in Antwerp, inviting pedestrians to sniff them. The work neither aimed for a visual nor an olfactory exploration, but rather the meaning behind them. Some colors will smell like we think they will, 47

others will not. It depends on one’s origin, culture, habits, and perception of how one believes that a scent can be a representative of a color and vice versa (De Cupere, 2014).

Metaphor / Thought provoking “When you walk into an installation with scent, you cannot hide. Your body starts to react”, said De Cupere. Olfactory installations often use smells that are either familiar or out of place to flood the visitor’s nasal senses when they stepp into a completely different environment. The smells are either wellmatched or contradict the visual quality of the installation.

De Cupere’s installation that looks like garbage, but smells like pine and cedar, honey mustard, and peach-cassis, provides an example of installation art with contradictory smells. The unpredictable feeling from a mixture of visual and smell stimuli, not only evokes emotion and memory, but also provokes visitors into thinking deeply about smell in particular contexts and metaphorical interpretations.

During the time in which Fluxus was emerging in the 70s, Edward Ruscha covered the walls of an entire room with 360 shingle-like sheets of chocolate-coated paper for the 35th Venice Biennale in 1970. As many artists in the Fluxus group had works that focused on natural changing odors of organic materials in forms of sculpture, Ruscha also explored the use of unconventional organic substances in his installation, in order to create an environment that confronted the viewers with the unexpected. The rich aroma of chocolate stimulates intense senses for the viewers, especially when the wallpaper began to melt from the hot summer temperatures, attracting swarms of bugs and ants to eat away the wallpaper. It was also damaged by humans, who licked their fingers and pressed onto the surface. Chocolate Room forces visitors to question their preconceptions about the relationship between the taste of chocolate and a sense of euphoria, proving that too much of anything is a bad thing (The Angry Architect, 2015).

The Womanhouse in 1972 was an experimental feminist art program in Chicago. One of the installations, Menstruation Bathroom by Judy Chicago, shows a white, clean and deodorized bathroom with used and unused feminine hygiene products, such as a garbage bin full of sanitary pads painted in red symbolizing menstruation blood. The use of the smell of blood was meant to present the issue of women’s blood as taboo in society, a metaphor of embarrassment, the unspeakable and something to be hidden behind the bathroom door. Due to the sense of shame in this place that it is too unclean to be allowed in a public space, visitors could 48

(Top) Edward Ruscha.

Chocolate Room (1970/2004).

The 35th Venice Biennale.

(Middle) Judy Chicago.

Menstruation Bathroom (1995) Reinstallation at LAMOCA of 1972, Los Angeles (Bottom) Peter De Cupere.

Smile Room (2010) Art Brussel 2010.

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not walk into the room, but only peered through a gauze over the entrance of the room.

In a recent work from Art Brussels in 2010, Smile Room, an olfactory installation by Peter de Cupere, was positioned behind an ordinary door, waiting for visitors to enter the rooms, which were completely scented with pungent smells.

The exhibition was made up of a bathroom and a living room.

The bathroom was made with 3400 tubes toothpaste, creating a concentrated peppermint fragrance. By experiencing intense odors, one might generate an activation of lost memories from their personal experiences, as smell is very intimate and subjective from person to person.

Olfaction Consciousness This subchapter is dedicated to olfactory installation that forces people to be conscious of their olfactory perception, requiring viewers to be aware and responsive to smell stimuli in their surroundings. Visitors maximize the capacity of their sense of smell, almost without help from other senses, in order to make decisions, play games, and to direct themselves in walking through the space. The installations employ the same visual factors, but different odor information to challenge the visitors’ sense of smell rather than relying on sight. In her work, Smell Chess (1965), Takako Saito, one of the members of the Fluxus group, shows an early example of olfactory artwork, which challenged olfaction consciousness.

However, the work was ambiguous. It was somewhere between an installation and a game. Saito reworked a chess game into three versions: Smell Chess, Sound Chess and Weight Chess, so that players would be forced to hone in on their non-visual perceptions, such as the olfactory sense, in order to follow the rules of the game (Mesch, 2006). Saito assigned specific scents to chess pieces, each made from a vial filled with a different liquid scent, so that players can only recognize the position of a piece by sniffing its scent closely to determine their identity and to move them properly. Smell Chess demonstrates how olfactory codes can move the game of chess along through its power of smell.

Another playful game-like installation invites visitors to utilize sense of smell by navigating through Olfactory Labyrinth (2013) by Maki Ueda. Bottles containing fragrant oil are hung from the ceiling in a 50-cm wide grid, for a person to walk through. The smell from each bottle is only strong enough to be smelled from a 20-cm distance, so that a person can trace a smell from bottle to bottle. Three different oils are used and placed in a cluster or in lines, acting like three 50

Takako Saito.

Smell Chess, Liquids.

(1965).

From the book Fluxus Experience, Hannah Higgins.

invisible routes in a labyrinth. Instead of focusing on the scent itself, the installation focuses on an omni-directional olfactory experience, proving that humans indeed have forgotten the ability to sniff around to navigate like dogs, which rely on sense of smell more than the others.

The concept of sniffing like a dog, enabling visitors to experience space by sense of smell, also appeared in her earlier work, OLFACTOSCAPE: Deconstructing Chanel No. 5 (2012). The exhibition was made of a 3m-diameter circular room made with a curtain painted with scents. Individual components of Chanel No.5 are separately sprayed at different locations on the curtain, so when visitors walk along the curtain, they smell the individual scent. Once the 51

(Top) Maki Ueda.

Olfactory Labyrinth (2013).

ATSUKOBAROUGH, Tokyo.

(Bottom) Maki Ueda.

OLFACTOSCAPE: Deconstructing Chanel No.5 (2012) V2, The Institute for Unstable Media in Rotterdam.

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Olfactory Art Forms

Olfactory Installation Purposes

Olfactory Movie

Immersive Experience

Perfume Art

Recreation / Reproduction

Digital Scent Technology Olfactory Device Smell Map of Cities

Examination of Smell and Color

Olfactory Sculpture

Metaphor / Thought Provoking

Olfactor Consciousness

Olfactory Installation

visitors stand in the middle of the space, where the individual ingredients come together, they smell the harmony of Chanel No.5. However, visitors are encouraged to close their eyes and move slowly, being forced to use their other senses: touch, smell, and kinesthesia, which are usually conceived by sight and even sound in combination with movement (Verbeek, 2012). Visitors recognize their position in a defined space with their hands, nose and body. The unique circumstances of the installation proves that movement and odors can define space. Caro Verbeek, an art historian specializing in senses and olfactory art, describes her experience when she was in the space: ‘By shifting my weight from one foot to another I try to find the exact border between the two. And there it is! Sharp like a knife. Apparently movement facilitates a spatial perception of odour to such a level that it becomes a floating and clearly defined shape.’ (Ibid) In fact, dimensions of space and the geometrical layout of a space are not only perceived by visual systems, but auditory systems, sense of balance, olfactory senses and tactile senses. Olfactory stimuli indicates orientation, the same as the auditory system lets us know the position of a sound-emitting object. All of the sensory systems of space perception allow the brain to construct a virtual model of the environment (Dürrschmid, 2011: 196-197).

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__________________

The Techniques

It is always a challenge for olfactory artists to work with smell, because smell is invisible, difficult to control, diffusive, and lingers in the space. The environment, such as the dimension and quality of the room, whether the room is open or enclosed, has a ventilation system, and the temperature of the space, all plays important role in how smells function in a particular space. Perhaps olfactory art installation is always a site-specific installation. The environment influences artist’s choices of smell, the method for controlling smell, and the configuration of scent objects in the installation.

Artist’s choices of smell vary from natural to artificial smells.

An installation using natural systems means the installation releases its own scents, and reveals the scent objects as the main subject of the work. It could be both natural organic materials, such as food, wood, or synthetic materials, such as toothpaste. Artists make use of the ever-changing process of these natural smells, especially odors from the decay process of organic material, to create living sculptures or installations that can be perceived differently through time. During the period of the exhibition, season, temperature and humidity are important factors, affecting olfactory perception of the area. The pine woods of Zumthor’s Swiss pavilion released different smells between cool days and hot days. Smell sculptures using organic materials, such as Roth’s Staple Cheese (A Race) or Fabre’s The Legs of Reason Skinned made of ham, released rotten smells after a few hot days, and Ruscha’s Chocolate Room installation melted in hot summer temperatures.

Chocolate is one of the most widely used organic scented materials because of its distinctive aroma, which is linked to pleasurable experiences for most people. The distinct smell and taste of chocolate makes a powerful cultural and chemical connection in the brain where art is perceived and emotional responses are determined, triggering memories, associations and emotions (Nalls, 2010). Moreover, chocolate affects multiple senses in the audience, i.e. sight, smell, touch, and taste. A chocolate scholar, Carlo Matin, wrote about chocolate art in her blog: ‘There’s something almost achingly beautiful about works of art created from fragile, perishable materials like chocolate. These works celebrate the ephemeral sensuality of chocolate, and challenge us to 54

understand them in light of their inevitable demise.

For they are, indeed, hopelessly breakable, melt-able, rot-able, and “eatable”.’ (Martin, 2011).

In addition to Ruscha, who works with chocolate, there are other contemporary olfactory artists, who use chocolate to communicate diverse subjects to the audience. George Heslop created a full-size chocolate sculpture of Jesus in Jesus on the Cross (2006), to display during Easter week. A very traditional depiction of the crucifixion made of chocolate provokes people to rethink meaning of Easter. He pointed out that Chocolate eggs and bunnies wrapped in beautiful packages are a practice of retail opportunism, which turn sacred holidays into an opportunity to make money.

Paul McCarthy, whose favorite materials are ketchup and chocolate, started using household materials to make art since the earlier of his artist life, partly because he was broke at that time. He originally wanted to be a painter, so he replaced paint with sauce since they are both liquid. For him food is a symbol.

“It just sort of led to the obvious. And that was that ketchup was blood. It was ketchup – but it could be blood. Mayonnaise was mayonnaise – but it could be sperm. Mustard could be shit. Chocolate could also be shit.” (McCarthy, 2011).

However, the intensity of a smell is difficult to control by natural means. This sometimes causes a problem with the museum if it becomes too intense. For example, the exhibition, Staple Cheese (A Race) by Dieter Roth was forced to shut down after a few days because of its over powering smell and because of concerns about the flies, which could cause health risks. The exhibition was thrown away many years later by the gallery owner (McGurk, 2014). For this reason, artists who work with many different smells in the installation tend to work on a smaller scale, using scented objects that diffuse smaller invisible smell bubbles for each scent. This way, the installations are easier to control and the smells do not linger in the area. These installations require viewers to bring their noses closer to the work, to sniff the objects, as seen in the scent bottles in Olfactory Labyrinth , the scented walls in OLFACTOSCAPE: Deconstructing Chanel No. 5 and The FEAR of smell - the smell of FEAR, or even in installations, where the viewers hold the scented objects and sniff them as they choose, as in U-deur and Smell Chess.

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Some artists choose controlled systems to deal with different smells in their installations. The controlled system can mix different smells to provide accurate desired results of smells, and appropriate intensity. However, the installation requires close proximity between viewers and the work. Viewers need to insert their heads into a small controlled scented environment, like Airquarium, and AIR, Smell of Helsinki, Budapest and Paris, or insert their whole body into a controlled environment, as in Famous Deaths, where viewers have to lie down in mortuary freezers. Osmodrama is the only example of an olfactory installation with many different smells that does not require close proximity of the viewers to the scent.

This comes as a result of the technology of mixing smell and ventilating the air in an enclosed environment.

The nature of smelling experiences in olfactory installations, mostly comes from static scented objects on both large and small scales, in which viewers can decide how to experience the installation on their own. An individual’s preferences of smell and intensity determine not only the distance between the viewer and the work, but they also determine how one interacts and moves through the installation.

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CONCLUSION I

n reading through different works, written by people from various fields of study, cultural historical, medical, commercial, scientific, and artistic, there are several terms for the word ‘smell’, which can be very confusing. ‘Smell’ is the most neutral word, as it can be considered either pleasant or unpleasant, and it can be used in all contexts. It also refers to a nose’s purpose - its sense of smell. ‘Odor’ is also a neutral word, but generally has a negative connotation, such as body odor, and usually comes from a single source. ‘Scent’ also refers to a sense of smell, but may also refer to a trail, left by humans or animals that can be traced, such as the scent of a skunk. ‘Scent’ is neutral, but generally refers to a pleasing smell.

Neutral topics like human senses, cultural history, scientific research on emotion and feelings tend to use the words ‘smell’ or ‘odor’, since they are completely interchangeable in this context. Topics that contain positive connotations of smell, such as marketing, healing, and topics that discuss human scents, use the word ‘scent’. The topics associated with art and installation use various olfactory terms, relating to the sense of smell, such as smell, odor, or scent, depending on the artist’s intentions. _____________________

Future Possibilities

From a technical approach, the scents from olfactory art tend to be diffused from static scented objects, which depend much on the spatial context, such as placement on the ground, attachment to a wall, extension from the ceiling, or requirement of visitors to be in confined spaces, such as a bubble helmet. The static scented objects allow visitors to freely explore the installation no matter where they may be physically standing within the exhibition.

There are no examples of olfactory installations, where scents are diffused from a moving source, such as a breeze carries scents to the nose, although this is more similar to the natural behavior of smell. Natural scents fluctuate, whereas scent in installations are static. This is most likely because scent is difficult to control and it tends to mix with the other 58

scents in the environment. This could be a chance to explore the technique of how to create a fluid pattern of smell. It can be done by either simply moving the scented object in the area, or creating a fluctuation of scented wind from different directions.

In addition, the roles of smell and its subconscious power have been explored in much marketing and scientific research. It has investigated how people make decisions or choose one thing over another, evaluating the effect of odor stimulation on emotions and feelings. Yet, there is no evidence of artistic works intended to serve the role of olfactory subconsciousness. No works exist in which the visitors are not intended to be fully aware of what they are experiencing, and should allow their feelings and the way in which they experience the installations to be influenced by their olfactory senses.

Most works of olfactory art and installations, imply from the beginning that visitors are about to encounter an olfactory experience, often by including the word ‘smell’ in the title.

The exception to this consists of the works of olfactory sculpture and olfactory installations, which are more thought provoking in their composition. Even if those works do not use verbal language to hint to the olfactory nature of the works to visitors, they contain some visual clues that link to sense of smell through the forms and materials used, especially organic materials. Once visitors see large organic objects sitting in the space, their senses of smell are certainly being prepared to encounter an olfactory experience. As a result, they consciuosly experience this part of the installation. The installations in the olfactory consciousness category and the olfactory devices, in particular, intend to wake visitors’ olfactory consciousness by almost shutting down the other senses, in order to experience the installation with only sense of smell.

The absence of art installations focusing on the subconscious power of smell opens new possibilities for olfactory installation to trick the visitor with other senses. This means the works should draw attention to other stimuli, as if there is no olfaction involved, when in fact, the viewer is experiencing an olfactory installation. Viewing the subconscious power of smell from other approaches, such as marketing, when smell can psychologically influence unaware consumers to choose or to feel something without noticing the smell stimuli, can be an alternative way to approach olfactory installation by tapping into the subconsciousness.

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DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP

I hearby certify that the thesis I am submitting is entirely my own original work except where otherwise indicated. I am aware of the University’s regulations concerning plagiarism, including those regulations concerning disciplinary actions that may result from plagiarism. Any use of the works of any other author, in any form, is properly acknowledged at their point of use. ________________ ________________ (Place, Date)

(Signature)