Odeuropa Summer / Autumn Newsletter 2023
Dear friends,
We hope you had a wonderful summer and a good start to autumn. It's been a busy quarter for the Odeuropa team: in the last few months, we have developed online resources explored and documented many smell stories in European history and heritage, and we have been working on online environments to make the data accessible. We have also held a conference on the scents of the past, toured Amsterdam following our noses, led a hackathon on sensory mining and published the first peer-reviewed scent!
Here are some highlights that might interest you:
Smell and the past: the book
New podcast series on the sense of smell
Call for Contributions for the Encyclopaedia of Smell History and Heritage
Musti challenge 2023
Nose Wise workshop at the Lorentz Centre
Exploring the sensory side of museum artefacts
Upcoming: Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair & Olfactory Heritage Workshop
Nosetalgia - a Kunstlicht Journal issue on scent
Communicating our work
Other sensory adventures
Keep reading for more details!
Smell and the past: the book
Odeuropa researcher Dr William Tullett has just published a book based on his Odeuropa research and it is freely available online. The book Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives has been released with Bloomsbury, can be purchased in hardback, and can be read online or downloaded as a free PDF from Bloomsbury Collections. Dr Tullett also recently appeared on Tony Robinson’s Cunningcast podcast, talking about the history of smell and the scents Odeuropa has developed in collaboration with IFF. You can listen to the episode here.
New podcasts on the sense of smell
Odeuropa’s olfactory event manager and researcher, Sofia Collette Ehrich is now the moderator for the Internet of Senses Institute’s podcast on the sense of smell. The Internet of Senses Institute was founded by Chris Valentine and aims to be a centralized platform that brings together experts, inventors, and enthusiasts who are passionate about emerging technologies and research connected to the five senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Interviews for the sense of smell include topics around smell and the metaverse, evidence based essential oil education and research, and smell culture and museology. You can listen to all the podcasts here and read more about the podcasts on the sense of smell here.
Call for Contributions for the Encyclopaedia of Smell History and Heritage
As we develop one of the major outputs of the project – an online Encyclopaedia of Smell History and Heritage – we are offering an opportunity for researchers and smell experts to get involved in writing entries. If you are interested in writing an entry of 2,000-5,000 words on a smell, place, or nose in European history from the 1600s to the 1920s then you can read more about our call for contributions here or get in touch with Will Tullett <will.tullett@york.ac.uk>.
Musti challenge 2023
Does your team have what it takes to solve the next Odeuropa challenge? Compete in the MediaEval 2023 MUSTI challenge organised by the Odeuropa team to further the state of the art in language technology and computer vision. In this task, it is your job to identify references to smells in paintings and match them to appropriate text snippets. Tackling it in a zero-shot setting is the additional challenge this year!
More information and registration here.
Nose Wise workshop at the Lorentz Centre
In July, we spent a few sunny days with colleagues in Leiden discussing the state of the art in olfactory research. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach to thinking about the future of smell, 20 researchers and heritage professionals joined us at the Lorentz Centre, a venue named after Dutch 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and which now encourages original takes on developing knowledge. From smell vocabularies to molecular prediction models, we moved towards a shared understanding of the different means (and limitations) we have for recognizing, classifying and modelling smell.
Exploring the sensory side of museum artefacts
How to communicate the value of smell, sound or tactile aspects of heritage artefacts? Odeuropa was recently at the centre of a workshop for heritage professionals who take a step back and learn how to incorporate the other senses into their work. The event was called The Aura of Objects, organised by UCL SENSOR, a group for researchers interested in multisensory approaches at University College London. Participants had a chance to handle rare scented materials such as ambergris and bergamot boxes, brought by Dr Isabelle Chazot, president of the Scientific Committee of the Osmothèque Conservatoire International des Parfums. Professor Michael Banissy, from the University of Bristol, spoke on the importance of touch, while Professor Mariana Lopez, based at the University of York, shared her work on historical soundscapes. After an exploratory lunch which included unusual cheeses and jasmine macarons, participants streched their legs during a sensory walk led by Stacy Hackney. You can read her account of the workshop here. If you are interested in taking part in similar events, keep reading!
Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair & Olfactory Heritage Workshop at the Trippenhuis
In December of this year, the Odeuropa project will draw to a close. To celebrate, we would like to invite you to our final event, the Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair & Olfactory Heritage Workshop which will take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands on November 28th, 2023.
This will be an unique opportunity to learn more about olfactory cultural heritage and sensory data mining and meet experts and practitioners from related areas and industries. We are expecting over one hundred people to attend, so please save the date in your calendar!
Would you like to receive updates with more details about the event? Are you interested in being an exhibitor at the Smell Culture Fair? Is there a topic you think should definitely be included during the training sessions? Please let us know by filling-in this form.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Nosetalgia - a Kunstlicht Journal issue on scent
In June, Odeuropa researcher Sofia Collette Ehrich and journalist Amarens Eggeraat co-edited an issue of the Kunstlicht Journal on smell and nostalgic perception titled Nosetalgia. The feeling of nostalgia is often associated with an aesthetic: Instagram filters and vintage styles. But can we take a more sensory approach to nostalgic perception? The issue showcases artists, perfumers, and scholars who contribute their thoughts, anecdotes and analyses of how smell plays an integral role to our nostalgic perceptions. As this particular issue puts smell center stage, scents were submitted as contributions. Perfumer Lucille Lefrang designed 6 perfumes to go with her written article - one of these smells accompanies every issue sold. Nosetalgia is available internationally, here.
Communicating our work
Odeuropa researchers Sara Tonelli and Pasquale Lisena discussed smells and AI at Venice's Perfume Museum (see image); Raphael Troncy spoke about Smelling the past without hallucination at BMW Summer School and Cecilia Bembibre shared our work on olfactory heritage policy development in ICOM CC Triennial Conference. We've also been talking abour our work in the media, with articles in the Hindustan Times, Le Point, Fragantica and Vogue.
Other sensory adventures
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new smell-centred children's book. Doom Town Dummies is a spooky adventure novel for ages 8+, written in part to inspire readers to look at the world through their noses.
Thanks for sharing this space. We wish you a great start of the academic year. We'll be back shortly; in the meantime, follow us on twitter and visit the (newly updated) Odeuropa website for more news.
Fragrant wishes,
The Odeuropa team