Part of olfactory artist and 2025 CCBT artist fellow Ueda Maki’s Olfacto-Politics: The Air as a Medium project, this symposium features Ueda in conversation with guest speakers from the forefront of the olfactory field. Open to the public.
As part of 2025 CCBT artist fellow Ueda Maki’s Olfacto-Politics: The Air as a Medium project, CCBT will host the symposium “When Smell Has Meaning: Aesthetics, Chemistry, and Digital Technology.”
Historically, the sense of smell was often treated as secondary to sight and hearing, and long neglected. In recent years, however, olfactory forms of expression in aesthetics and artistic practices have expanded, knowledge has deepened through chemical research, and digital olfactory technology have advanced, all attracting significant attention.
The symposium considers how smells, despite being invisible, relate closely to our lives and culture, and what possibilities our sense of smell may offer in the future. The guest speakers are: Iwasaki Yoko of Kyoto Saga University of Arts, who will discuss olfactory art from the perspective of aesthetics; Touhara Kazunari of the University of Tokyo, who will apply a chemistry framework to introduce how we perceive smells and their meaning; and Ricoh’s Ujimoto Katsuya, who is working on recording and reproducing air and odor through digital technology.
The discussion will explore smells not only as everyday and therapeutic stimuli, but also in terms of providing new perspectives at the intersection of aesthetics, chemistry, and technology.
The symposium, which includes a demonstration of Ricoh’s Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry odor measurement system, is open to the public and all are welcome to attend.
Project “Olfacto-Politics: The Air as a Medium“
This multifaceted project takes smell as a starting point for exploring the notion of the air we breathe as part of the commons, and attempts to make it possible to see and experience the air. The project comprises three parts: offering opportunities to learn in the form of lectures and workshops; conducting research to make the olfactory visible by using technology to measure the highly subjective sense that is smell; and creating and exhibiting spatial works that express air circulation. In this way, the project takes the air, the medium by which humans and all living creatures exchange manifold kinds of information, as a stepping stone to encourage us to think about biodiversity and biomes, and to inspire new ways of looking at the world.
Project structure
Phase 1
Olfactory Seminar “Smell Lab”
Phase 2
Research
Phase 3
Exhibition
CCBT Art Incubation Program
One of CCBT’s core programs, the Art Incubation Program provides opportunities for creative talent to undertake new projects and makes those processes accessible to the public, facilitating forms of artistic expression, exploration, and action that change our city for the better. Selected through an open call, five artist fellows will act as CCBT partners, developing their projects, making the creative process public, exhibiting the results, and holding workshops and talks.
