In the past 15 years, there has been a tremendous increase in the emergence of olfactory artworks despite the traditional skepticism with respect to scents as subjects of art. This essay submits that this skepticism lacks esthetic justification; art is what is accepted as such, and olfactory art is in fact already well accepted as an art form by the general public. However, there exists no methodological tool for the formal analysis of olfactory artworks. The essay suggests such a method, based on odor values; this is elaborated using the fragrance ‘Dune’ (1991), and is compared with a purely visual approach to the same subject. This new concept allows for the derivation of simple compositional sketches and is then exemplified by the formal analysis of three more recent olfactory artworks: Elodie Pong/Roman Kaiser, ‘White’ (2016), Martynka Wawrzyniak/Yann Vasnier, ‘Tears (T6)’ (201212ya), and Christophe Laudamiel, ‘heat’ (200321ya).
…When the fragrance materials mentioned above are combined to give a rough preliminary sketch of ‘Dune’ (1991), that is, a basic outline of the fragrance, analogous to the initial sketch of an artist outlining the basic idea for a painting, drawing or sculpture, it becomes apparent that the somewhat green-leafy seaweed contrast of the original is missing, which would seem to require the further addition of an ingredient providing a natural green-leafy note such as Stemone (d2) in the compositional sketch. Of course, the genuine perfume ‘Dune’ (1991) consists of many more materials, likely around 40 ingredients; yet, with these 12 compositional cornerstones one can already well sketch out, study and contemplate about the fragrance.
This provides the basis of a method for assessment of fragrances as objets d’art. After having identified the key elements of a scent, the individual odorants are arranged according to their evaporation profile (vapor pressures) from volatile to substantive. We can then outline each one as a block, the width of which corresponds to the perceived intensity of the ingredient, while the height indicates the duration of its perception moving along the evaporation curve of the scent from top to middle to base note. The y-axis will thus be a measure of the percentage amount of a given material in the formula, while the x-axis will correspond to the common logarithm of the odor value (OV) as a measure of intensity…To account for the fact that the sensory perception of potency is not linear but exponential, the common logarithm is used to correlate our perception with the mathematical data, and both correlate astonishingly well. Thus, after adjusting and equilibrating the individual odor blocks in different trials for ‘Dune’ (1991), the schematic representation delineated in Figure 2 was obtained in the fourth trial.
…‘Tears (T6)’ is the most interesting work of the ‘Smell Me’ series as it is the lightest, brightest, most uplifting and cheerful scent, although or quite possibly because the underlying tears weren’t anything but tears of joy (Figure 6). Wawrzyniak collected her tears in crying sessions by listening to songs from her childhood, including for instance those from the Polish movie ‘Akademia Pana Kleska’ (198341ya), and a tape recording with her parents when she was four years of age (Figure 7). Interestingly, she observed in her crying sessions that the smell of her tears changed according to the trigger of her sadness.