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The Odor Value Concept in the Formal Analysis of Olfactory Art
Author(s) -
Kraft Philip
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
helvetica chimica acta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.74
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1522-2675
pISSN - 0018-019X
DOI - 10.1002/hlca.201800185
Subject(s) - skepticism , subject (documents) , odor , value (mathematics) , aesthetics , art , psychology , epistemology , computer science , philosophy , neuroscience , machine learning , library science
In the past 15 years, there has been a tremendous increase in the emergence of olfactory artworks despite the traditional skepticism with respect to scents as subjects of art. This essay submits that this skepticism lacks aesthetic justification; art is what is accepted as such, and olfactory art is in fact already well accepted as an art form by the general public. However, there exists no methodological tool for the formal analysis of olfactory artworks. The essay suggests such a method, based on odor values; this is elaborated using the fragrance ‘Dune ’ ( Dior , 1991), and is compared with a purely visual approach to the same subject. This new concept allows for the derivation of simple compositional sketches and is then exemplified by the formal analysis of three more recent olfactory artworks: Elodie Pong / Roman Kaiser , ‘ White ‘ (2016), Martynka Wawrzyniak / Yann Vasnier , ‘ Tears (T6) ’ (2012), and Christophe Laudamiel , ‘ heat ’ (2003).