The apostle Plato / not quite synesthesia

[garran]

Seen, unexpectedly, on one of those mutable church signs:

THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING.
--SOCRATES

...which made me think that a church revering Socrates would be pretty interesting. There's certainly enough scripture.

Does anyone else, on having brought to mind the particular scent of some absent and lovely person, ever find that their natural next impulse is to want to call up that smell in their mp3 program?

Comments

[guthrek.livejournal.com]

I chose culinary because there are no Olfactory Arts, and smell is an enormous part of flavour.

I have no idea.

[garran.livejournal.com]

What about perfume? Or incense? Although it's true that these are often fairly clumsy, and that as far as I know nobody is composing symponies in smell. Which isn't really surprising: it seems like it would be harder to achieve a desired artistic effect aimed to the nose than to appeal to any single one of the other senses.


-Andy

[feedbacksolo.livejournal.com]

Possibly because things usually either smell good to you or they don't, where in visible and audible art forms there's a lot more ambiguity.

Actually, now I can think of quite a few things that just smell interesting without being appealing or unappealing. So, never mind. I suppose there is a lot of room for creativity, or at least causing suprise without revulsion in the scent-art world.

For some reason I kindof like it when I can prove myself wrong in my head without doing anything.

[masamage.livejournal.com]

I think it's more because it's really hard to shift between smells, because they fade so much more slowly than sound waves or light.

[garran.livejournal.com]

It feels like progress!

I agree with Rachel; more generally, it's much harder for us to have nuanced control over smell, or to record and reproduce it with any precision. Probably also in part that humans seem instinctually driven to communicate visually and audibly, but don't really have any natural capacity to communicate with smell.

Also, if you're trying out music and come up with a really discordant sound, it's a lot easier to take with equanimity its effect on the atmosphere - not to mention to stop it - than if your perfume goes bad. So it seems like experimentation is kind of discouraged.


-Andy H.

[meta4mix.livejournal.com]

Have you folks ever seen the movie "Harold & Maude"? ^____^;

Depending on a person's diet and physiology, there exists the potential for almost constant experimentation with discordant smells. Though the dog usually hogs all the credit.

Also, there exists Perfumery.