It is holiday season. This is the time of the year to feature perfumery on the front page. One would expect a portrait of one of the big brands, a review of celebrities, some sort of general interest. Continue reading Niche & mainstream consumer culture
All posts by Scent Culture Institute: Smelling in Culture, Business & Society
Symbol of the self
“The odor is a natural sign of the self as both a physical and a moral being. The odor is a symbol of the self.” – ANTONY SYNNOTT Continue reading Symbol of the self
Do the captives actually smell the fire?
A few days ago, I happened to come across this visualization of Plato’s thought provoking Allegory of the Cave. What the captives see and hear are shadows cast be objects they do not see. But what about the fire? Continue reading Do the captives actually smell the fire?
Scent Culture Monitor
In 2015, we started Scent Culture News to shape and build scent culture as field. Following our mission we have highlighted and connected fragmented themes, ideas, references, and projects that relate to the sense of smell in culture, business and society. More recently, we made a pause and reflected on recurring themes, issues and concepts. As a next step we want to shift our attention from merely disseminating news to a more provocative approach: The launch of our series of smellshots is a first consequence.The heading “Monitor” serves as an umbrella for posts that inform about new development, share observations and commentaries. Thus, the posts from the old Scent Culture New site have also recently been imported to this site.
Olfactory turn: Smellshots
A snapshot is a “casual photograph made typically by an amateur with a small handheld camera”. It is an “impression or view of something brief or transitory“. And what is a smellshot? Our new category smellshot aims at exploring this notion.
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Breathing in different sensory worlds
“Americans and Arabs live in different sensory worlds much of the time and do not use the same senses even to establish most of the distances maintained during conversations.” – EDWARD HALL Continue reading Breathing in different sensory worlds
Enchanting worlds
It was the social theorist Max Weber who identified progressive disenchantment as an underlying process of modernity. More recently, this creed of modern thinking has increasingly been challenged. Thus, enchantment often evokes the sublime and refers to an aura of authentic presence. Moreover, enchantment has been used as an analytical lense to look at consumer culture as well as new worlds of work. Accordingly, symbolic manipulation is used to enchant customers and employees. Continue reading Enchanting worlds
Automobility & Scent Culture: Another Market for Olfactory Nostalgia?
The olfactory dimension of automobility is the core theme of a recent essay by Claus Noppeney published in “Das Magazin” a weekly supplement to several Swiss newspapers. Continue reading Automobility & Scent Culture: Another Market for Olfactory Nostalgia?
Culturalizing Scent!
We have fleshed out some of the guiding ideas for Scent Culture Institute in our contribution to Designing with Smell: Designing with Smell: Practices, Techniques and Challenges - an impressive volumen honoring the work of Victoria Henshaw : Culturalizing scent!Â
Olfaktorischer Kommunikationszwang
“Wir sind zur olfaktorischen Kommunikation gezwungen.” – CLAUS NOPPENEY