"Sensorium"

For my film 115 class I attended the event "Sensorium" at the KSE building on Friday night for the UWM open house. The presentation was given by Sissel Tolaas and Caroline A. Jones. The lecture was basically a comment on the uses of senses in society and how that pertains to art and culture. Mrs. Jones discussed how devices such as headphones and sunglasses and so forth help assist our senses of hearing perception. She talked a little bit about the mystique of art in reaction to the senses, such as St. Theresa's heavenly aroma in Christian art. She then switched her attention to the sense of smell and how that is the one sense that technology and modern art have not fully figured out. With Ms. Tolaas talk, she explained her research and studies in the field of scent and traveled to many places to find the scents of cities, towns, countries, clothing, people, etc. By incorporating all of her research data into a bottles she was able to smell each container blindfolded to train herself to learn scents like the alphabet. She then also applied her findings into art galleries/museums onto walls to signify the presence of a certain location or person within that building.

While I found the presentation to drag on a bit, I couldn't help but be somewhat interested in all the emphasis applied to heightening the senses (particularly smell) to add substance to art and culture. It's very true that these two subjects are rarely paired together and I think that Ms. Tolaas's "dirt" perfume was also a very interesting idea (bad smell marketed in a cologne/perfume bottle). The installations were really a comment on culture and how we all percieve what smells "good" and what smells "bad", or more predominantly what appeals to our senses, just as visual art may appeal to our intellect. I think the quote Mrs. Jones posted says it all: "smell is for the soul, not the mind."