Within my PhD project “Embodiment of the volatile. The ability to notice that a substance is present. Or: how glass becomes odor“, I claim that the association of smell to a thing, object, is enough to create a smell. I posit that glass in this artistic research is the ideal material that allows to stimulate the olfactory imagination. Due to its properties of being odorless, it gives space for the individual olfactory imagination. It serves as an empty vessel to collect imaginative smells and becomes projection surface for olfactory memories. Beyond that, glass is associated with our daily taste and smell rhythm and carries laboratory function. I borrow the aesthetics of laboratory glasses, distillation systems and transform them into installations from studio blown objects that serve as a visually hint, an implicit atmosphere of a volatile substance that is present and becomes protagonist. I use glasses of the daily to guarantee easy access, so that participants can form my artistic practice into their habits, playfully observing their sense of smell. I use glass as a smelling tool, for data collection and data interpretation in objects and sculptures. Glass becomes an extension of the body, part of the olfactory apparatus, but remains aesthetically reduced with a sense of genuineness in the aesthetics of my works to allow the perception of the participant becoming the heart of the work.

In the atmosphere of artistic research, the STUDIO FOR ARTISTIC RESEARCH, I perform a multi sensory Glass Tasting, which allows the participants to explore their sense of smell, but especially their olfactory imagination: We will explore which stimuli is (individually) needed to activate glass as a bridge to smell memories and emotion. Borrowing the framework of wine and coffee tastings, we taste or rather smell glass under different multi sensory conditions.

The objective is to create an aesthetic experience which combines typical stimuli of perceiving art with touch and smell.

Text: Lena Trost

www.lenatrost.com