Within my PhD project I claim that the association of smell to a thing, object, is enough to create a smell and the actual reception exists even if the smell is imaginary. The objective is to create an aesthetic experience which combines typical stimuli of perceiving art with touch and smell.
The body of my artistic practice is the material glass. I use glass as a tool to trigger smell memories. Glass is known for being odourless and is, like odour, both tangible and intangible at the same time.

The key question is, which stimuli most directly taps into the individual olfactory memory?

I developed my Digital Glass Tasting Website as an artistic method to answer this question in a both playful and explorative way. The users of the Digital Glass Tasting Website are invited to smell glass under different multisensorial conditions using glasses of their daily life.

Essential results and preliminary conclusion:
The experiences of the Digital Glass Tastings have shown that short sentences create the concentration for sensing imaginative smell. The combination of colour and smell descriptions create deeper and longer responses.

Identification of sources of funding:
Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, Munich, Artist residency Schloss Balmoral, Graduiertenzentrum Hochschule Koblenz