As you may know, Berlin has been the scene of my recent scent explorations, where we had the greatest luck of doing a scent-immersion with perfumers duo and avant-garde scent artists Les Christophs (Christophe Laudamiel and Christoph Hornetz).
Christophe Laudamiel created the first Scent Opera for the Guggenheim Museum in NY, has exhibited at Grasse Perfume Museum as well as galleries. He is an outstanding gem in the world of perfumery as the only Master Perfumer who wholeheartedly engages with such art and educational initiatives.
Several people flew in at our "Duft-Visions" workshops, including Prof. Claus Noppeney, a Swiss academic who is doing something outstanding in the academic world: he is carefully studying the perfume-making process as part of an ethnographic project.
Duft Haus Berlin
As a result of these extraordinary encounters, I will be running the first "Olfactory Art and Design" course ever done for the academia, at the University of the Arts Bern next year, part of the Y Institute programme, Centre for Transdisciplinary Tuition.
The application of scents in art and design around the world is growing, bypassing their traditional use for fine fragrance creation. Artists and designers, but also curators and educators, are expressing their work through the sense of smell.
A very powerful sense, as in evocative and emotional, scent can create a unique, immersive experience, through the stimulation of an often neglected sensory modality which is so much connected with our own personal experience.
At the "Olfactory Art and Design" course MA and BA cross-discipline students will explore multiple correspondences between their areas of expertise and the sense of smell, crossing the boundaries amongst different forms of expression. They will study a palette of real ingredients used in perfumery and produce an Olfactory Art and Design project.
Very much looking forward to it!
NP/SP
