How Glass Becomes Odor. Glass Tasting

Lena Trost

Info: Within my PhD project Embodiment of the volatile. The ability to notice that a substance is present. Or: how glass becomes odor, I claim that the association of smell to a thing, object, is enough to create a smell. I posit that glass in this artistic research is the ideal material that allows to stimulate the olfactory imagination. Due to its properties of being odorless, it gives space for the individual olfactory imagination. It serves as an empty vessel to collect imaginative smells and becomes projection surface for olfactory memories. Beyond that, glass is associated with our daily taste and smell rhythm and carries laboratory function. I borrow the aesthetics of laboratory glasses, distillation systems and transform them into installations from studio blown objects that serve as a visually hint, an implicit atmosphere of a volatile substance that is present and becomes protagonist. I use glasses of the daily to guarantee easy access, so that participants can form my artistic practice into their habits, playfully observing their sense of smell. (…)