Clara Ursitti

Artist/Lecturer, Glasgow School of Art/Valand, Gothenburg University.

The Nose Knows:
Discourses in Olfactory Art and Science

How does a person with an artistic education understand science? How does a scientist use the visual language of drawing to understand what they cannot see with the naked eye? What common language can we use to facilitate this discussion? How can we discuss odours when there is no verbal language for what you are experience except metaphor or crude dichotomies (ie: It smells like roses; It smells good; It smells bad, to name but a few examples).

These are questions that often come up within my research in terms of solving the practical problems of working on the borders of art and science. Using video, sound and image, I intend to document my process of dialogue with people in diverse fields, with their own specialist languages. My intention is to make my research process more visible.

Through a grant I was recently awarded from GothenburgUniversity, I have made initial contact with smell experts (“noses”) and foundations in New York and the UK including:

• Christopher Brosius, a perfumer who has a studio/laboratory in New York. I am interested in meeting him as he creates unusual perfumes (including the smell of grass, dirt, fire, beetroot to name but a few).
• Frank Voegel, a perfumer who works for the fragrance house Symrise, New York
• Robin Cleary, chemist and biologist working for Quest International, a fragrance house with several bases around the world including the UK.

For Sensuous Knowledge 2, I would like to propose to present a collation and distillation of this initial research, which would include, video, sound and image.

Background

I am an artist who works with smell. I have been collaborating with George Dodd, a biochemist and perfumer, for the past 10 years to create portraits in scent. I create smell environments chemically and organically which I disperse electronically in the gallery setting. Unlike vision and the other senses, there is no language for smell. Consequently we speak about smell either metaphorically (it smells like oranges) or through crude dichotomies of good and bad. I am interested in these dichotomies and what they exclude.

Ongoing research issues:

a) The borders of what is positively labeled a science, or negatively labeled as pseudo-science

I have been working with the same scientist (George Dodd) for the past 10 years, and have an active and critical interest in the paradigms and ideologies that inform what is positively labeled as science, or negatively as pseudo-science. This project will explore some questions in this area. Last spring I was invited to give a performance lecture in Toronto at the annual International Art and Science Symposium at the University of Toronto, titled Subtle Techologies. Here I spoke about pheromones, playfully presenting myself as a researcher rather than an artist.

b) Non-verbal and chemical communication / miscommunication

(Through looking at pheromone research)

c) Blindness and the non – visual senses

I have a commitment to exploring the non-visual in my practice, and have been testing the possibilities of developing a language/aesthetic for this interest for well over a decade. Increasingly I am approached to talk about my work in this context for conferences, and most recently have been interviewed for two upcoming books on the subject. Fiona Candlin will be interviewing me for her forthcoming book on the subject of blindness and touch in museums, and Jim Drobnick will be including my work in a book to be published this winter titled The Smell Cultural Reader (Berg Publishers, Oxford).