Syllabus 2013

Smell and Art 

2013
teacher: Maki Ueda 

What is it that we are smelling, what does it make you imagine, what does it make you feel? Could we incorporate the olfactory sense in art? Could smell be a medium carrying information? This course will deal with these questions through a combination of lectures, workshops, intermediate presentations and a final presentation. In this course we will start with looking at examples of art and the olfactory sense, then we will discuss the potential of the olfactory sense in art. The workshops will first focus on fieldwork and on observing the environment with the olfactory sense. You will smell a lot and learn how to communicate about smell with others, using a basic vocabulary for analyzing and expressing the character of a smell. Secondly we will extract smells from raw materials like soup, cheese burgers, old books, rubber tyres, flowers, and smelly T-shirts. You will learn how to do this yourself and how to compose new smells (in the most simple way).

You're expected to develop an olfactory game as a final assignment.

Website of the 2010 version:
http://smellart.blogspot.com/

DAY 1: Tue, October 1
morning:
- orientation / introducing each other
- on smelling: walk n' sniff / sniffing spaces like a dog
afternoon:
- on assignment: examples from the past year

DAY 2: Thu, October 3
morning:
- on infusing: extraction workshop
afternoon:
- on diffusing: air, wind, temperature, humidity experiments

DAY 3: Tue, October 8
morning:
- on incense: incense making workshop
afternoon:
- brainstorming on assignment

DAY 4: Thu, October 10
whole day: work on assignment

DAY 5: Tue, October 15
whole day: work on assignment

DAY 6: Thu, October 17
morning:
- final presentation
afternoon:
- for fun: Kohdo, a Japanese olfactory game