Bruno Mesz on his piece "Osmosonic study no 5"
Watch my interview with Bruno Mesz on his piece “Osmosonic study no 5”. The piece plays with the utopian ideas of “smelled trill” and “olfactorized audition” proposed by Myin and Cooke: would a sequence of smells having the typical temporal behaviour of sounds have a phenomenal character transformed to sound-likeness, and the opposite way for sounds?. The conceptualization of the piece is also based on crossmodal smell-music associations and on the effect of music on smell perception and vice versa. Spectators are provided with two perfumery strips aromatized with two contrasting perfumes designed by María Zegna, and invited to smell them alternately at various speeds (slow to fast) during the performance.The weak intensities of both perfume and music are inspired by the concept of blandness in Chinese philosophy (François Jullien): the formless and (almost) toneless and odorless would possess the ability to lead to a harmony of the senses, to “communicate with all things” and “reach all destinations”.
Bruno Mesz is an art-scientist. Professor and researcher at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (Argentina). Studies in mathematics at Buenos Aires University and music at National Conservatory of Music (Nat.Prof.Music). Main research interests: multisensory perception, crossmodal correspondences, and mathematical music theory. Designed multisensory performances and installations, showcased at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), MALBA Museum (Buenos Aires), International Tango Festival of Buenos Aires, BIENALSUR (Buenos Aires), Andreani Foundation (Buenos Aires) Miami Art Week 2019, Loop Barcelona 2019, among others.