“Face-to-face interaction penetrates in a gaseous form into our most intimate inner being. The current Coronavirus outbreak surfaces a forgotten concept of communication that is deeply ingrained in culture: Face-to-face communication is a miasmic intercourse.”
– CLAUS NOPPENEY
27 January is the day for everyone to remember the millions of people killed in the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. The Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this day I take the liberty to share a few lines I recently discovered in a book by Marcus Smith. Continue reading “A stench beyond experience”
“The focus on smell in design does not mean the addition of applied scent to all aspects of the design, but rather the awareness of smell as an inherent dimension of it … This awareness may lead to the realization that the appropriate solution is the removal or masking of a smell…The negotiation of odorizing and deodorizing is a skillset that should be part of every designer’s toolbox, as that awareness in itself is increasingly an important factor in the success or failure of design.” – ASHRAF OSMAN, CLAUS NOPPENEY & NADA ENDRISSAT
Continue reading Smell in design
“Now sight is superior to touch in purity, and hearing and smell to taste.” – ARISTOTELES
Continue reading Ocularcentrism
“Smell may not seem a profound enough problem to dominate all the life sciences, but it contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries.” – LEWIS THOMAS
“We thought it necessary to begin with the sense of smell, because of all the senses it is the one which appears to contribute least to the knowledge of the human mind.” – Etienne Bonnot de CONDILLAC Continue reading Ignorant smelling
“As for the tempting delight of sweet smells, I am not too much taken with it. When I miss them, I do not seek them; when I may have them, I do not refuse them: yet also ready always to be without them.” – AUGUSTINE (354-430) Continue reading Of our delight in smelling
A new study reveals broader health implications of the sense of smell. Continue reading Health relevance of sense of smell
“At the beginning was actually not the Verb, but the Scent: for chemical detection was the communication tool used by the first bacteria appearing on earth, for food and reproduction.” –
CHRISTOPHE LAUDAMIEL, CHRISTOPH HORNETZ, BRAJA MOOKHERJEE & SUBHA PATEL Continue reading Perfumer
This Fall, many of you may be teaching a course on sensation and perception or lecturing on scent culture. Why not put What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life on your reading list (as we did!)? It’s an entertaining way to introduce students to classical topics such as odor memory and identification, important aroma molecules, history of scent measurement, and more. Continue reading What the nose knows…
