Reflection & Evaluation
FA6010
Saturday, 22 May 2021
In the simple narrative of perception, our sense of simplicity is essential.
We are at our core a simple thing, a simple cellular form, multiplied and advanced in capabilities of developing within a context. Adapt. And each of that simple cell is interconnected with the next one, eliminating the gaps that civilization is imposing between societies.
And what does that has to do with smell?
It is smell. Life depends on breath. It is Universal, continuous, until it isn’t any more. Breath is a symbol of life in itself and through centuries people developed the need to enhance every breath they have by engaging with smell. And most of the times, not with their own. But a mirroring one, one that can adjust all the senses through synaesthesia. Smelling you completes my smell in the same way the Oxygen completes the chemical formula of water. In the very way the two Hydrogen atoms complete the same formula. What we observe and smell around us is what we have within and in the same time missing.
This is the context for my art practice. An environment of stimulus, perceived by senses, digitised through imagination. My research is wide. I use language and language barriers to describe something overly personal and subjective. Essential oils, thread, wood, waste, video, sound, image, embroidery, drawings, paintings, ceramic sculptures… The elements commingle in creating a new reality for the sense of smell. In the end, my art work may only be a word. Or an empty container.
I grasp questions like:
What does a feeling smells like?
What does my thought smells like?
[Example: a thought represents ideas and association that leads to a logical conclusion. This is all processed in the brain by neuronal connections. The brain is made out of Cerebrum, cerebellum, brain stems (just the three main parts). But then we have matter, blood, mucus etc, all these having particularities in relation with smell. Dissecting the brain will not have the same odour as imagining how the process of dissection and brain components smells like. And how our thought process happens and what is the relation of the process with smell in our perception. I may associate a neuron with an earthy smell just through imagery association with the construction of a tree and the verbal description of the trunk and roots.]
I
de-
construct
I work with images and language until a smell is detected. Making perfumes out of experience and imagination. This year I was and am exploring art as a form of inquiry, a way to experiment knowledge, mixed and compelling ways of analysing an environment, becoming more aware of breath, thoughts and actions. In practice, the sense of smell is developed by experimenting with smell. It is the same with everything in life. More drawing, a better illustrator you will become…
I researched into the idea of parasites and half-parasites that the olfactory artist Peter de Cupere converged through his work called ‘PTDB – Tree Virus’. Or I work with understanding how the mind creates the object, through the work and neuroscience research of Ani Liu who makes perfumes that captures the smell of individuals with sentimental significance for her. I am also fascinated of Angela Ellsworth’s demonstration of how smell infuses a space and outstrips our experience of visual expression.
I research into a topic, bring lexicon and imagery, show it, discuss and further research. Until virtual smell is created. I have exhibited my art to my peers, to my family and friends, to people I have barely met. My audience is always engaging. But is rarely satisfied with the interaction. Some said that I am just a poet, I may be a magician if I further develop my induction skills, I may be a wonderful storyteller… My practice develops every single day in new and unusual ways. I document my work through video, sound pieces and photography. I have tried different approaches in explaining smell but I got easily bored of describing strawberries as being sweet. So I better invite my audience to smell experiences and to describe them with experiences.
Through my experimentation and directing my thought towards the Major Project, I work with exploration of the permanent and dynamic relationship between natural, cultural and physical. I enter cultures, work with happenings, I use low budget elements to create an authentic perfume and process of experimentation of a perfume. I provide further context for research and investigation.
I look into how interdisciplinary art can be, how science and art can create an open environment for the public to experiment by challenging habits and certitudes. If I say that my breakfast smelled today like the stairs of a museum; as much as I mentally associate those stairs with excitement, someone may say that I had a really bad and spoiled food at breakfast. I create the experience that I want to live.
ART WORK
Wednesday, 5 May, 2021
A project near the END
120 tests of trying to perceive the same smell in a mentally sterilised environment. It is physically impossible to describe a smell 120 different times, in the same way. The multi sensory experience cannot be diminished nor erased.
I have smelled the same object, the same metallic perfume vial with no perfume in it 120 times for 5 minutes in 120 different situations. The experience was always different, depending of: time of day, state of mind, personal smell, environment, hormonal state, self, position of my body, temperature in the room, light, meal, colours in the background, sound… All mattered. The odorous perception of that object was a multisensory experience each of the 120 times. Even after the experiment of the 120 smelling times I would still argue that smell is just the modification of our consciousness.
In my experiment there is presence, energy, movement, occupied space by colour, alongside thought, recipe, idea. It is a spatial experience composed of mostly spatial synergistic experiences, a matrix of all smells. A table would not consciously perceive the smell of another table. But our perception is complex, containing the wood molecules, of the coverage that the table knew, of the molecule reminiscence of fish blood and liquids, of the fruit zest, of the grease and fingerprints, of the spilled wine. All impressions becomes highly informational with respect to objects, elements that are spatial and combine odour experiences. And in this case, odour has the same spatiality for the sense of smell that the starry sky has on our retina.
Research Artist: Ernesto Neto
Thursday, 29 April, 2021
Installation by Ernesto Neto © Yann Caradec / Flickr
The Brazilian fabric sculptor, Ernesto Neto hanged nylon stockings from the ceilling or allow them to lay on the floor, all filled with coloured powders of cloves, cumin, citrus and turmeric. It felt like going inside of the womb, in that Universe that we travelled through, we know it, but we have no recollection of it, only a vague memory that involves all senses. The installation was a part of the Wonderland exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum in 2000. Ernesto Neto is a contemporary visual artist that creates biomorphic art structures and installations that are ruled to engage all senses and human perception that is meant to break any known boundaries between senses.
The scent spread around the room and through the whole museum space was sometimes pure, sometimes abject, at times you could feel it being overwhelming or just induced a complete relaxed and dreamy state of mind. The perception of the scents were all in the experiences of the audience.
Ernesto’s Neto’s artworks ‘stem from a holistic viewpoint in which art can provide a haven for mending the fracture between mind and body’ said Shiner and Kriskovets, (2007)
Where my olfactory art stands. FOR
Saturday, 10 April, 2021
I look at a work of olfactory art. There is a chemical signal going between us. Myself I am offering and spreading a scent. And in correlation with that piece of art the scents are creating an environment in themselves. It is not only the work or art I analyse, but the work of olfactory art with my participation to it.
So in the overall interpretation of olfactory art, there is also the chemistry of ourselves. We may engage our feelings, emotions in a conscious way and still unconsciously make scent judgements and chemically decide if we resonate with the art in front of us. It is a new acquisition for our brain, understanding a new language, a new way of communication.
Smell and yell Neglect the intellect
Wednesday, 24 March, 2021
In 1909 there was a historic document published in Le Figaro announcing The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, a new genre that triggered manifestos around the entire world inspiring art by other means. And in 1913, published in Lacerba, the Futurist manifesto called The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells written by Carlo Cara, an anarchist against the silent art. Through the rough and noisy declarations, all futuristic forms of art were to consider Descartes’s and Kant’s theories about the senses and more specifically to the subject, about the sense of smell. This time brought into the artistic space, the smell became the violent need to return to origins, to the savage nature of humans. But in the same time, opening new paths for the world of art.
‘We Futurists state, therefore, that in bringing the elements of sound, noise and smell to painting we are opening fresh paths.
We have already evolved, as artists, a love of modern life in its essential dynamism – its sounds, noises and smells – thereby destroying the stupid passion for the solemn, the bombastic, the serene, the hieratic and the mummified: everything purely intellectual, in fact.’ (Danchev, 2011).
‘The so-called sweet perfumes of flowers prove insufficient to our nostrils that demand more violent olfactory sensations… Hence we begin a new field of investigation and artistic creation.’ was declaring the Italian Futurist painter Fedele Azari in 1924 in his La Flora Futurista ed equivalent plastici di odori artificiali (The Futurist Flora and Plastic Equivalents of Artificial Odours) is the first Futurist manifesto that discusses smell as a direct medium.’ (Heywood, n.d.)
And what is smell but a particular form of chemical sensitivity?
Tuesday, 9 March, 2021
In this interpretation, trees too are touched by the smell of matsutake, allowing it into their roots….
Smell is elusive. Its effects surprise us. We don’t know how to put much about smell into words, even when our reactions are strong and certain. Humans breathe and smell in the same intake of air, and describing smell seems almost as difficult as describing air. But smell, unlike air, is the sign of the presence of another, to which we are already responding.
Response always takes us somewhere new; we are not quite ourselves any more – or at least the selves we were, but rather ourselves in encounter with another. (‘The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins’, ANNA LOWENHAUPT TSING)
The smell of the Invisible
how Olfaction can shift our perception about the world and all forms of Art
Saturday, 20 February, 2021
Exercise your nose to make Invisible art. How to practice Odour Object Recognition, develop the sense of olfaction and make art out of it – Odor object recognition would allow for the sense of smell to perform feature extraction and object synthesis that lead to the elaboration of a stable, background-detached representation of complex signals.’ (Margot, C., 2009)
Why philosophy frustrated the olfaction
Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud, 2002) describes the human identity as an act of ‘organic repression’ as the men, raising on it’s feet and detaching itself from the earth, abstracts itself from the condition of the animal. Then a ‘diminution of the olfactory stimuli’ happens according to Freud, and in the same time a detachment from the faeces, blood, the stimulating smells that are sexually appealing. The human’s verticalization is the producer of a ‘cultural trend towards cleanliness’ narrowing the sexual freedom too. But that leads to ‘the founding of the family and so to the threshold of human civilization’.
In the general perception, the hierarchy of the senses is sight, hearing, taste, touch and then smell. Around 400 years ago it was understandable for philosophers to consider the sense of smell less relevant in the configuration of the human body and mind and it’s importance was only a reference to human survival. The sense of smell was starting to lack any cultural significance and Sigmund Freud’s perception of the smell was not detached from the historical trends.
Who am I?
Thursday, 4 February, 2021
Who am I? Who I am? Am I? I? Am?
I am a collection of cells, molecules, energy, vibration. When I make a natural perfume, I feel like a child baking the best cake made of wet dirt. So proud of mixing the humid astringent dirt, the bits of roots and pebbles altogether. I live the emotion, the vanity…
I have booklets with recipes, some copied, some improvised. Base notes, middle notes, top notes… A development of a mixture, a spectacle of odours.
While I make a virtual perfume I feel, sense, taste, hear, see. I read and write. Look for. Engage. Close my eyes more often than when I make a natural perfume. As I need to ‘see’ better something that it is not there.
A natural perfume has a presence, a molecular presence. A virtual perfume has an unconscious unconscious presence. It is there but it is not. I know of it when I give up not knowing. I remember.
I asked myself many times if I am an olfactory artist. Or not. Do I make art or non-art? Exists or does not exists? I tried many times to give a definition to what I make. I failed. I think I am both, I build, install, destroy. The cycle of life. If you draw, you have to first see, understand, perceive, measure, see again, try a different [perspective, a different idea. We base our present on what past showed us to be real. Now our reality is never something new but something recycled.
I am a recycler. Of ideas, of essential oils, of words and sensations.
This is my desk sometimes. I teach myself new odours by taking out my ‘failures’ and smelling them again. They all have a story of the day I made them. I never throw them, but use and reuse them, either in burners, either sprinkle them in my house. I relieve my art through all means. My gallery is in my drawer.
To smell or not to smell. a Word?
Saturday, 23 January, 2021
Digitising the sense of smell is not a new approach to perfumery and technology. In the present socio-cultural environment this can be an answer to many questions.
Firstly, digitising scent can be used for medical assessments, which is incredible useful.
‘’A trained dog can sniff the disease in the exhale breath of a patient. We have 5 senses. But only 3 of them have been commercialised or combined into one object. Today we still do not have a technical device that deserves the name smell sensor because it is so difficult. One of the reasons why it is so difficult is that instead of dealing with Mechano Photo receptors which are quite easy to mimic technologically, we need ChEMOreceptors in order to realise that. You can think at Chemo Receptors just like a Molecular translator. It translates the information which is contained in odour molecules like structural, functional group, size, shape and so on and converts that into bytes and bits and electronic signals. And these signals can later be interpreted by your brain and basically tells you what it smells.’ (Bintinger, 2018)
Scientist are looking for years to develop a VR headset that can emit smells. On an awkward smell journey, the world has now ‘OhRoma’ made by ‘CamSoda’ which is actually a VR-compatible scent mask that injects the smells of roses, perfume and private parts into your VR webcamming experience.
Or FeelReal, the world’s first Multisensory Mask that releases smells, vibrates, and blasts your face with air or mist to make VR experiences more immersing, simulates hundreds of smells to captivate and engage you into virtual world.
But my questions still arises: How to create scent and perceive it without the odour presence?
My Virtual Perfumery Practice is based on induction of a particular smell experience. That involves not only a build up of a odours IQ but also a build up of imaginative vocabulary.
There are studies acknowledging the fact that we can train easily our sense of smell by simply trying out new aromas twice a day, for 30 seconds. It is a mental training that will help us improve all our senses even if we want to learn how to breathe, to enjoy a particular taste, etc.
Even easier is to associate that new smells with particular emotions. Example: I have learned in the last 2 days the smell of an old, rusty metal key. I associated the smell with the word naval as I was often smelled that rustiness when I was visiting my brother at work (he was working in our town’s naval port).
Through a logical deduction, and according to the psychological constructionist Conceptual Act Theory (CAT), ‘language plays a role in emotion because language supports the conceptual knowledge used to make meaning of sensations from the body and world in a given context (Lindquist, MacCormack and Shablack, 2015)
And because our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion, the logical conclusion is that we can create smell through words. For me, the digitalisation of smell does not necessarily includes high end technology but creative ways to create emotion, odour and perception.
Bibliography
Bintinger, J., 2018. A biomimetic smell sensor. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0CrmQq9kKI&ab_channel=TEDxTalks>
Lindquist, K., MacCormack, J. and Shablack, H., 2015. The role of language in emotion: predictions from psychological constructionism. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.
Good smells good, evil smells bad. I like the smell of Devil. It is the one of Good
Monday, 4 January, 2021
‘The sweet odor is God’s “tell.” Mythically, it is a simple expression of His goodness. Good smells good; evil smell bad. Philosophically, things are more complicated. What exactly is the relation of these heavenly odors to the “true” essence of God? (Kleinberg, 2015)
There are grades in goodness and evil. No human can smell as good as God or as bad as the Devil. But in a diminished fashion, smells denote the moral and religious status of all people. (Kleinberg, 2015)
The Devil’s smell was very different. As a demonstration, he filled the air with the stench of sulfur, “hoping to conceal the false nature of the first odor’s sweetness with the succession of smells (in tendens eorum successione precedentis illius suavitatis palliare fallaciam).”2 (Kleinberg, 2015)
Kleinberg, A., 2015. The Sensual God. How the Senses Make the Almighty Senseless. Columbia University Press, pp.135-143.
I took these fragments from ‘The Sensual God’ as highlights for a Virtual Perfume that I am working on, called OxyMoron. The perfume is both sweet as Good and fetor as the Devil. 2 contradictions that includes each other. As God would not exist without the Devil (how else would we know he is good?!)and the Devil would not exist in the absence of God.
I like the smell of Devil. It is the one of Good – Perfume
I mixed the 2 ingredients together. In a large pot. In a container. On a cloud. On lava.
Which is which?
Is broken stench a better Good in sweetness?
Is Devil better understood in a coffee cup?
I Good worse if he smells bad?
How often does God washes?
Look, this is God’s body odour. Puffy clouds of mould.
And look, this is Devil’s odour. Brown aromatic coffee.
I mixed them both. They smell like this.
The Oxymoron of Existence.
No name Containers
Tuesday, 15 December , 2020
As exercise I have tried to create a different aspect of a virtual perfume. Giving no name. The question I have started with in each of them cases was, if I ignore words and I use my practices from the last three years: painting, sculpture, installation, wire work, will I be able to create a smell just by looking at a bottle and its context?
It may be a challenge that I would like to try. And alongside the research and development that I am doing I will interrogate myself and others in regards to it.
I will also carry on developing the physical form of a perfume. To discover, expand my practice and at the right time, to expose the audience to it.
I speak odour
Level 6, Winter Show project at School of Art, Architecture and Design, 2020-2021
Tuesday, 1 December, 2020
The end of the year project is a short improvised presentation of making a perfume. The theme of Covid 19 was brought into the context as a way to reflect on the frustration and the uselessness of even wearing or presenting a perfume outside enclosed doors. We cannot freely smell yet. And the limited lab from my kitchen table is the metaphor of change. Change of practice, of ideas, of mentalities. By being a little bit sarcastic too.
In the present context of a sterile sense of touch and smell, I have adapted my practice and I have learned a lot. I researched a lot. My ongoing project can develop in multiple directions as words and images can tremendously influence our general perception of odour. As I am looking now into the future, my final project will be based on the new, poetic language of smell.
My experiments until now to create invisible, virtual smell were many, diverse and most of them a failure. In creating a virtual smell I have made a perfume and a textual interpretation of that perfume. When I now read the text and smell the bottle content, the association does not exist. Even if one was inspired by the other, I cannot feel the same perfume in the same way by smelling it and by imagining it. So there are already two different ways of interpretation.
I have also tried to create the idea of a perfume by using image elements. I have not used the classic image of flowers but ingredients that can alter the idea of a spray-on-product and allow for the brain to modify its plasticity, interact with new elements, learn something new. As our perception of an image depends so much on a subject’s personality, type of learner, background, experience, memory etc, the interpretation is too vast. The conclusion here is that I need to use well known elements so I can create at least a 0.01% common ground.
I have discussed with one of my tutors last year about the idea of antagonistic advertising and the image for the Marketing Cyber Phalanx project was an exercise in this direction, presenting a distorted image, poorly edited with an inadequate container presented. As it is difficult for the general public to perceive a perfume in a commercial, advertisers are trying to create the product desirable by using weird, sexualised images and movements. My exercise of antagonistic advertising it is not something that I am happy with, I feel that it lacks consistence and the message is lost. After looking at Maki Ueda, a Japanese multimedia artist who incorporates the olfactory sense in art who considers that fewer visuals means a stronger olfactory experience, I decided to either focus on text, either on the image.
From this semester I am willing to advance my practice and research and focus more on textual and linguistic approaches in creating virtual perfumes. I think that tales, poetry, stories can create such an image of a perfume.
I will also think more about the context in which to present my ideas, space – both virtual and physical and audiences that will have access to it.
The Perfume of my present thought: MARKETING CYBER PHALANX
Sunday, 22 November, 2020
Imagine. Why imagine. Imagine the smell
Hot smell of summer
The acoustic of the sea enclosed in a bottle
All in a bottle, smashing with sand and vapours the prickling edges of the glass
Penetrating your nose
Red bathing suit
Untangling the idea of uncommon
Not common smell.
PH of hot skin, perspiration
Pronounce it:
pur-spuh-RAY-shun (link)1
Urhea (yoo-REE-uh)
Amonia, salt and sugar.
Bacteria
Blood coming out
A marketing campaign for your nose
Red is appealing
Is hot
Smells hot
Pepper, paprika, jalapeño
Fury, anger, red of a phalanx
A cyber phalanx smelling like metal and oil
With blood smelling like metal
My thought smells now like red metal
Not copper
Think copper
What do you smell?
Following up a session in FA6010 Methods & Enquiry, about Methods and Intuition, I have detached myself from the researched form of a perfume and embraced Intuition in creating a virtual and linguistic experience of smell. The process was simple: I have put down on paper 3 random words coming through my mind. Searched on Google each one of them. Clicked on the first result. First word of the first phrase from the first title is the result of each word from the perfume name.
The perfume can be smelled in the text on the right. Also, as an exercise, I have tried to create an image or an antiimage of a perfume by collaging pictures and illustrations.
I have presented this project on both FA6P01 and FA6010 to my tutors and peers and the feedback and critique was diverse and constructive.
Fragment from one of my tutor’s feedback that I am looking into, in my future work
”I suspect its more about language than it is about odour. Your project presents itself as a study of a particular element when in actual fact odour is just an illustration of a kind of ‘sublime impossibility’.
To be continued…
Research Artist: Ani Liu
Thursday, 12 November, 2020
“Smell is preverbal, and has no capacity to pretend.” Caroline A. Jones
“The nostrils awakes a forgotten image and fall into a vivid dream. The nose makes the eyes to remember. ” Juhani Pllasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin
Research Artist
Ani Liu creates perfume that capture the smell of individuals with emotional significance for her. Using science and emotions, she captured 3 different smells of 3 different individuals. Her artistic work goes hand in hand with her research in neuroscience focused on how olfactory stimuli interacts with behavioural response.
Ani Liu, a biological being in search of the smell with an emotional approach. What strike me about her story is the fact that coming from China, the scents that she found familiar in her life were considered different in her school environment. And to make the difference between what smells wrong or good or what is the acceptable level of a smell she started her research in smell. As a research based artist specialised in technology and coding, trying to recreate the smell of a loved one with whom she was in a long distance relationship for a long time was a quest that she needed acquired.
Having the garments of a loved one after sexual intercourse placed in solvents to be able to extract the molecules. Distil the essence of the extraction, and mix it with chemicals to create a perfume. And all that for grabbing the moments we lost. Lost moment. Lived and lost. To help moving on. To smell how was like to be with a person. But is this ritual a way of letting go or actually living and reliving that moment forever?
To be continued
Monday, 9 November, 2020
Feedback for further research – Imagery Perfume / Part 3
Feedback received from my peers in regards with the Imagery Perfume
‘first two strong’ K
‘4, 3, 2, 5 (this is the closest so far of ”taking somewhere”. 5 (it is repellent but also triggers memories of other times)) MY
‘only for me: lemon and no. 3; discernible citrus smell no.1; general sweet smell no. 3. nothing for cigarettes, books or rubber I’m afraid’ MA
‘first image made my mouth watery. 2nd image happy smell of the beginning of the school term (childhood). 4. I smelled woodland. 5.smell of meetings and discussions during and after revolution.’ ZO
‘tobacco – faint smell. Rejected immediately’ H
‘I had a special recognition for the eraser. Mostly touch sense. The cigarettes buds made me go for a fag’ B
Friday, 6 November, 2020
Testing Imagery Perfume/ Part 2
Volatile organic compounds. An aroma compound is called odorant, aroma, fragrance, flavour or chemical compound. Has a smell or odour and has to be volatile enough to be transported to our olfactory system.
Top notes: Lemon
Middle notes: Tuberose – Rubber, Ambrette seed – Musk
Base notes : Vanilla- books, Tabac
The smell of rubber – after being bled from the rubber tree it begins coagulation and degradation, releasing volatile organic compounds, malodorous.
The smell of books – an ageing book will have fainter chemical/volatile compounds as the smell of ink, paper, glue starts to fade with time. The International League for Antiquarian Booksellers described the smell of the book as having a hint of vanilla. ‘Lignin, which is present in all wood-based paper, is closely related to vanillin. As it breaks down, the lignin grants old books that faint vanilla scent.”
While a study made in 2009 called ‘Material Degradomics: On the Smell of Old Books’ described the smell as a combination of ‘grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.’ ¹
¹ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac9016049
Imagery Perfume / Part 1
Wednesday, 4 November 2020
One of the steps of my research was to recreate a perfume using imagery, strong images that our retina got familiarised with. For 10 seconds, close your eyes and imagine you are holding a big yellow lemon into your hands. Now take a bite from that juicy lemon. How do you feel? Did saliva invaded your taste buds?
You have the instructions here, the images bellow.
- Look at each image for 10 seconds, sniffing, trying to capture the smell
- Grade the smell from 0 to 6
0 – no odor
1 – very weak (odor threshold)
2 – weak
3 – distinct
4 – strong
5 – very strong
6 – intolerable
- Take notes. Describe each step
- Describe the final perfume
How my thoughts do look like now, if I am to make a diagram of my research and practice
Sunday, 25 Oct 2020
Making the ‘Perfume of the closed eyes – the retronasal smell’
Sunday, 25 Oct 2020
experimental #Virtual Perfume
Ingredient list:
2 x closed eyes / 1 x roof of the mouth / 1 1/2 vivid imagery of a ripen grape / 963 Hz sound of thy river / flushes
Method:
take for granted the lack of wine
as you quit altering your reality
use a vivid imagery of squeezing grapes between your fingers
recall the sound of thy river in the back of your mouth
feel the cold saltiness
on the skin of your eyelids
it smells like a rehydrated grape
it smells like hot flushes
roll your tongue
exhale
let the air that absorbs the odour of the closed eyes
to be felt on the back of the tongue
let it volatilize
keep your mouth closed and feel the odour
going into the back of the nasal chamber
and through your nostrils
up to the olfactory sensory neurons
and stimulate them²
the new frontier in science
communal memories
this is new
unusual smell
a recollection image
that encodes memory
the smell
a narrative different from the story¹
¹ Marks, L., n.d. Touch. University of Minnesota Press, pp.122-123.
² Shepherd, G.M., 2020. Retronasal Smell: 7.
My poetry was made to exercise smell with a different approach
Gabriela Cociasi 