“Duft, Design & Kultur: Wo bleibt das Riechen in der Creative Economy?”, this is the title of an upcoming talk (24 January 2018, 19.00) at the Inatura in Dornbirn.
Tag Archives: scent culture
Narratives describing smells
“The idea was to create simple still lives looking at the memory and history of different perfumes and creating a narrative to describe their smell through vessels, subtle textures and the balance of notes.â€
Scent Verse: Muse Booze
Scent Verse is a inspiring poetry project on Basenotes curated by writer Eddie Bulliqi. Continue reading Scent Verse: Muse Booze
Scent: Beyond control
In a recent interview with the Swiss-German daily newspaper Bund published in Bern Claus Noppeney talks about the role of scent in contemporary culture and society: “Scent control is a challenge“.  Continue reading Scent: Beyond control
Spektrum’s “Smell Lab”
The Smell Lab is a monthly meeting space in Berlin for those interested in experimenting with the sense of smell. It is part of Spektrum, “a space of convergence for cultural communities and trans-disciplinary groups emerging and operating in and off Berlin”. Continue reading Spektrum’s “Smell Lab”
Umberto Eco R.I.P.:Turn scent into a stimulus for critical reflection!
Umberto Eco, the Italian cultural theorist and novelist who became the author of best-selling novels, notably the blockbuster medieval mystery “The Name of the Rose,†died last week in Milan. Eco was a contributor to our thinking on scent culture.
Continue reading Umberto Eco R.I.P.:Turn scent into a stimulus for critical reflection!
Turn scent into a stimulus for critical reflection!
Umberto Eco, the Italian cultural theorist and novelist who became the author of best-selling novels, notably the blockbuster medieval mystery “The Name of the Rose,†died last week in Milan.
Eco was a contributor to our thinking on scent culture. According to various internet entries Umberto Eco once noted the olfactory qualities of books: “I love the smell of book ink in the morning.†This love for the smell of books is, in fact, shared by many writers, including as Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, and was the subject of a recent post of ours.
And in his groundbreaking Theory of Semiotics, Eco thinks of scents as part of the semiotic field. He refers to Baudelaire’s “code of scents†and coins the phrase “olfactory signsâ€: “If there are scents with a connotative value in an emotive sense then there are also odors with precise referential values.”
In a short essay on television Eco calls for a critical reflection on the social and cultural consequences. In fact, we later paraphrased a key sentence from Eco’s essay when starting the Scent Culture Institute and drafting our foundation statement: “Western Culture & Society will only develop further, if it turns scent into a stimulus for critical reflection – not an invitation for hypnosis.”
References:
Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Eco, U. (1993). “Can television teach?†In M. Alvarado, R. Collins, & E. Buscombe (Eds.), The Screen education reader: cinema, television, culture: 95–107. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 97.
Competing notions: high art, perfume & scent culture
This not so recent article from the Guardian demonstrates some of the ongoing confusion without addressing it directly: “From France to Dubai, scent is viewed as high art – but not in America. What is it about US’s relationship to smell that puts it so far behind in this field?”. Moreover, there are numerous subtle and open contradictions about art, perfume, & culture and a commitment to scent culture (the name we coined for our group): Continue reading Competing notions: high art, perfume & scent culture