The Sense of Smell is Invisible

What is interesting about the sense of smell is that it is connected to everything else. It is a connecting sense. And in terms of academic research, it's wonderful because it is so interdisciplinary.

-Hans Rindisbacher

Author of The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature

Professor of German
Chair, Dept. of German & Russian
Pomona College, Claremont, California

 
Rindisbacher's current research is in Soviet perfumery from socio-historic perspectives. It includes how the ideal of the feminine changes in controlled political climates, as do relationships to perfumery and cosmetics.

A previous article click here

 

Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible.   - Paul Klee


photos: Lura Astor

The Century of Odour? The Nose has Gained Stature

I think it's an interesting area to look at because essentially,
the investigation of the olfactory
is the investigation of everything else.

- Hans Rindisbacher, author of The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature, and more, here

Scent as the Seat of the Soul
 
Gustav Jaeger, author of Origins of the Soul, a zoologist, physician, and contemporary of Charles Darwin, "reportedly reckoned that scent was the seat of the soul".


















 

My DNA

The Transparent Citizen
 
"Yes, they've been collecting human scents to trace anti-globalisation activists they believe may try to disrupt the G8 summit in June. They have been confiscating sweaty vests and getting well-known radicals to impregnate steel pipes with their hand odour to present to their German shepherds." 

- Rindisbacher














 
"Oh, a number of people have called the twenty-first century das Jahrhundert des geruch, the century of odour. The nose has gained in stature. This gain is reflected, for instance in a more aggressive stance by the perfume industry and the exploding artificial fragrance and flavour business. I think the first newspaper reference I saw to the social implications of environmental fragrancing systems was in the 1990s, in the Wall Street Journal. In it, executives of a leading fragrance manufacturer acknowledged that smells of the future could be potent enough to put smell suppliers in competition with the pharmaceutical industry." - Rindisbacher

 
 From Amber Marks' book
Headspace: Sniffer Dogs, Spy Bees and One Woman's Adventures in the Surveillance Society

more on Odour Clues & Odor Clue Collectors! chapter 25: The New World Odour
read full text here
Alternative book cover image here




Stasi Smell Jars mentioned in book 







photos:
Big Stinky  Huntington Library and Gardens
My DNA press photo
GDR Duftproben Stasi Smell Jars Appaloosa 2009
G8 Protest Sam Fentress, Edinburgh 2005
Clues Syker Fotograf