CCB Magazine

What is “olfactory art” and how does the future smell? Wolfgang Georgsdorf, born in Austria, in Berlin for over 25 years, has been working on this question for years. He calls his art OSMODRAMA; his works oscillate between art and science, original experience of nature and high-tech equipment. The artist became known above all for SMELLER 2.0 - a universal odour projector that produces scents from the most diverse times and spaces for collective experience: Welcome to the motorway service area, a freshly mown meadow or to the village fair at the confectionery stand. He is currently working at his research station in the Dahme-Heideseen Nature Park, touring the whole world with his huge SMELLER 2.0 odour organ and bringing together the scent of time, nature, technology and art. We spoke to the jack-of-all-trades on the phone while he was just buying material for his new project at the DIY store.

Interview Kora Annika Böndgen

CCB Magazine: Hello Wolfgang, can you hear me? I want to talk to you about your work on smell and nature, technology, art and a good future. Do you have a minute?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: Yes, ok, I’m listening! I'm standing in the hardware store right now. How can I help? 

CCB Magazine: You’ve developed Smeller 2.0, a unique olfactory organ. I myself saw and smelled the SMELLER 2.0 last year in the exhibition “Welt ohne Außen” in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. I remember the biting smell of petrol stations, freshly cut grass in the summer rain or my childhood on Grandma's farm. In a good 12 minutes there were over 140 smells to be experienced here. For those who don't know what SMELLER 2.0 is, describe it in five sentences. 

Wolfgang Georgsdorf:SMELLER is part of the art form OSMODRAMA developed by me, a time-based art of complex and precise sequences of smells and fragrances that can work alone or in combination with all other fields of art and communication known to us. The electronically controlled, 1.6-tonne odour organ is a universal odour projector that can project pre-mixed odours and scents from 64 basic odours into a hall for a collective experience of various times and rooms, so that with each breath we can experience a new odour - without it mixing with previous or subsequent ones. I developed a first version as early as 1996. In 2012 I was able to develop SMELLER 2.0 with an interdisciplinary team of experts from the fields of fluid mechanics, perfumery, design, architecture, electronics, mechatronics, chemistry, physics, mathematics and the support of fantastic companies and trades. In the Gropius building, the SMELLER didn't work ideally in terms of space - but it was still possible to smell something.

SMELLER 2.0 is a universal odour projector that lets 64 basic odours, premixed odours and scents of different times and rooms flow into a room for a collective experience

CCB Magazine: Oh yes, I did. The smell of rotting fish is still in my nose today, but so is the smell of freshly roasted almonds. In the Gropius-Bau you conducted a study together with the Charité and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Smelling and Tasting of the Polyklinikum Dresden to determine what effects OSMODRAMA has on individuals suffering from anosmia, the blindness of the nose caused by depression, for example. How exactly did this happen and what are the results?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: The ENT centre at Kudamm was also there. We gave selected test persons with season tickets and sent them daily to the SMELLER for 30 to 60 minutes, as it was also set up for visitors. Before, after half the time, and afterwards, they were intensively examined, screening. The result: 44 percent of all patients showed a significant improvement in their symptoms. However, OSMODRAMA has nothing to do with aromatherapy, but brings feelings to life through olfactory experiences and - as we know empirically - has a therapeutic effect especially for depressives, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients. The rapid succession of olfactory sequences extremely triggers drives, memories and feelings, which is a real alternative to pharmaceuticals. The publication of this study is imminent.

Photo © Gianmarco Bresadola

Photo © Michele Bavaud

CCB Magazine: Your work moves in the area between art and science. Do you claim that art improves society, as in your case, by contributing to health care?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf:I am primarily an artist. But to produce a sensational by-product in the art of healing with art is at least news-capable. From curating to curating, so to speak. If so many medicines are administered in medicine today, then everyone should know that there is something else that really works. Now we are preparing an experimental arrangement with our medical colleagues in which the people are pushed into the MRI so that we can see which brain areas fire when experiencing OSMODRAMA. For the development of great creative potentials we need sensual, physical experience in general, i.e. experience of nature. I'm currently adapting a large Art Nouveau villa for a future farming community, a kind of Co-Working Living Space on 500square metres with 34 rooms, 10,000 square metres of garden and park directly in the Dahme-Heideseen Nature Park, which is one of the most sparsely populated and beautiful areas in Germany with over a hundred lakes. There is also a pack of wolves, storks land here and wild geese. That doesn't just help you think. It’s only an hour by train and bus from Berlin.

CCB Magazine: Is this also about sustainability? Or more about the experience of nature?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: Both! But it's not limited to that, either. The forest - also in its transferred meaning - is a laboratory in which we find very important things or phenomena for us. For example, I’ve been doing projects here for many years in cooperation with the Oberförsterei, because “forest” has been really important to me since I was young, but not just in the “green” sense, but metaphorically. I grew up in the city. But the forest is a kind of general key thematically. A universe of scents. And real forest, for example, is perfect order and disorder at the same time. I communicate this with projects like Waldkino, Lesefährten, large installations in public spaces. I refer to this of my work as “forest work”.

“Sustainability - ecological, economic, or in research - for us that’s no longer possible without computers. That's why I don't see nature conservation and mechanisation as opposites

CCB Magazine: If we look at the development of rising emissions in Germany, in 1992 the traffic area in this country still covered 16,441 square kilometres or almost 5 per cent of the total floor area. Between 1992 and 2017, the area increased by 10 per cent. Emissions from traffic are also constantly on the rise, and inner cities are literally clogging up. Is this desire to experience nature also a consequence of this development?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: Of course, everyone feels that things simply can’t go on like this. But increasing mechanisation and nature conservation needn’t be contradictory; technology in particular allows us to experience nature in a completely new way today. Sustainability - ecological, economical, or in research - for us this is no longer possible without computers. But in general I believe that we’re in the process of rediscovering our own bodies. A new sort of longing is emerging in increasing virtuality and digitalisation, but also in terms of the pervasiveness of audio-visual dominance. And by the way, the scent of smell is a huge door-opener.

Foto © Naoh Nixon

Foto ©Julian van Dieken

CCB Magazine: Do you also see any political themes in your work? 

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: With OSMODRAMA, I would like to see an art realized in our society, both practically and theoretically, that has never existed before. There's also a political side to this: it's all about chemical communication: molecules that become feelings. Scent-based narration. I want to break the vast spectrum of artistic and scientific research projects that SMELLER 2.0 can plug into all the sorts of important questions. This also includes topics as topical as the climate crisis, increasing stress, inequality. Above all, however, I would like to see my work open up a chapter of multisensory presentations and performances whose quality and possibilities most of us can only imagine once we’ve experienced them. OSMODRAMA and the collective experience of time-based olfactory art and communication should become cultural reality – and in a sense, this can be understood politically.

CCB Magazine: What I’m wondering is how you came to dedicate yourself to, let's say, “very exclusive” fields of art?

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: The sense of smell has always fascinated me for several reasons: First, it's a largely unexplored field in terms of art, especially time-based arts. Second, it’s evolutionarily the first and physically the deepest sense located in the limbic system of the brain stem. Third, it offers a dazzling variety of correlations with other artistic and scientific disciplines. Fourth, it’s a treasure unearthed in art and communication and a powerful poetic powerhouse. My grandparents, with whom I lived as a child, me to satisfy my curiosity with just about everything. They would give me their expired medicine to play with, with the proviso that I would not actually take them. But I was allowed to smell them. So I always had a sort of mental toolbox of invisible images. 

Smell is one of the next big things. It helps us to re-establish contact with our own nature. It will also completely change the art and media world: Film and smell in previously unseen forms of presentation, music and smell, sound and smell, literature and smell, dance and smell

CCB Magazine: Wolfgang, our latest issue is called “The Big Good Future” #2. It's about digitalisation in art and culture. In your view, what’s in store in this “big, good future” with respect to the sense of smell in the digital age? 

Wolfgang Georgsdorf: Obviously, the sense of smell is one of the next big things that will be explored. Smell is both virtual and analogue at the same time. It's virtual because it creates something very real in us that isn't even there. And it's analogue because it doesn't consist of waves, but of particles, of real matter. Smell will be a key in manned space expeditions that travel over generations. And smell helps us to re-establish contact with our own nature. It will also change the art and media world. Especially today, with technological innovations we can experience the connection of smells to other media: Film and odour in previously unseen forms of presentation, music and odour, sound and odour, literature and odour, dance and odour, to name only the most important. In the future, we’ll also see effective therapeutic approaches that perhaps were never expected. Time-based chemical communication is a field that we hardly know, and that’s why we’re only just beginning with design models. OSMODRAMA brings these artistically to the point and it is only a question of time until we can feel the effect in society more clearly. Especially when I think of AI. I’m really excited about it!

CCB Magazine:Wolfgang, thank you very much for this interview.

Profile of Wolfgang Georgsdorf on Creative City Berlin

Portfolio of OSMODRAMA - Festival für Geruchskunst on Creative City Berlin