Olfaction: On Learning Through the Nose

Over the past decade I have developed an artist-research-pedagogy practice related to the senses. In 2011, I facilitated a workshop at the NAPAR (Narrative, Arts-Based, and “Post” Approaches to Social Research) conference on the senses and enacted a public intervention “Smell Graffiti” (2011). The discrete public gesture was inspired by Sarah Klein’s “The Bread Project” (2002), in which sourdough bread was baked and served in the Fairmount Plaza Office Tower, San Jose, California. Over an eight-hour day, bread was prepared and baked, and then the hot loaves were sliced and given away to office workers and the public. In addition to providing nourishment, the project penetrated otherwise sanitized spaces with the hot, yeasty smell of bread.

“Smell Graffiti” (2011) atomized various scents such as buttered popcorn, rose, pine, coffee, chocolate, rain, wet grass, sky, morning dew, sea water, and so forth, and then dispersed the scents around the Arizona State campus. Disrupting the visual nature of graffiti, the participants left incongruous smells on sidewalks, bicycles, garbage bins, and other campus structures.