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.
