“La Perfume De Therese” (perfume by Frederic Malle) is an
effervescent and lively fragrance with notes of plum, melon,
leather, and tangerine. It is a sheer thin suede orange background with a fuzzy purple streak.
“Carnal Flower” (perfume by
Frederic Malle) is a fragrance
with notes of tuberose absolute,
eucalyptus, jasmine, and coconut. It is a hazy, fuzzy sheer
green background with sheer
burgundy rectangles throughout that repeat randomly in an
infinite pattern. The texture of
the painting is delicate, gauzy,
and sheer.
“Un Fleur de Cassie” (perfume by Frederic Malle)
is an elegant, sharp, unusual fragrance with notes
of mimose, carnation, jasmine, and cassis. It smells
like a powdery, unevenly yellow thin suede-like
background with a few large purple streaks.
al and olfactory-auditory synesthesia. She would
cook by adding spices until her food sounded
like a symphony, and occasionally created artthemed foods, such as a cheesecake flavored
to reproduce the color scheme of Van Gogh’s
painting Starry Night. When I am with her, I
have to adjust my behavior, as doing something
as small as clicking a carabiner absentmindedly
might cause everything to flash blue. I realized
we lived in incredibly different subjective realities, something I found both personally and
scientifically fascinating. As I read and learned
more about synesthesia, I got better at recognizing it in people and ended up discovering
that several of my friends and acquaintances
likely have some form of synesthesia.
So when I heard that Lauren—a perfumery
student just out of high school—had managed
to beat multiple experienced perfumers for a
job, it wasn’t much of a leap to guess she might
have some kind of olfactory synesthesia in addition to having a very sensitive and trained nose.
I am pleased to say I was right and that collaborating with Lauren ever since has been both a
privilege and a pleasure.
18
How are you using the SciArt Center Grant?
KO: We used a portion of the money to buy
art supplies to create sample paintings of synesthetic visualizations. Lauren is in the process of
creating a series of artworks depicting her synesthetic experience of fragrance. In particular,
she is choosing perfumes that she enjoys, that
produce vivid and aesthetic visual imagery, and
that illustrate the range and variety of colors,
shapes, and textures she experiences.
On the other hand, I am trying to figure out
how to quantify these in a way that is reproducible and consistent. How do you quantify a
color or shape? Can we reduce these pieces of
art to a series of numbers that represent color,
shape, texture, size, or pattern in a way that is
satisfactory to both Lauren and myself? Quantification of visual imagery has turned out to be
a greater challenge than I had imagined upon
starting this project. However, being able to see
Lauren’s art and discuss how she perceives it has
been enormously helpful.
I am working on obtaining approval for
human subject research so that we can actu-
SciArt in America April 2015