I was able to attend a show entitled Odophonics, a collaboration between the olfactory artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter, composer Sean Francis Conway, and performed by the string quartet Dr. Batya MacAdams-Somer, Rebecca Matayoshi, Robbie Bui and Kathryn Schulmeister. I found the experience to be psychically complicated.
We were first greeted by a small discussion from Brian and Sean Francis, describing some of the historical context of their methodology and chosen ‘scent scale’. Brian explained that he would be dropping oils into bowls that were being heated to steamy by some hot plates, with some fans delivering that scented steam into the audience. As avant guard as this whole experience was, they utilized the scent scale developed by Septimus_Piesse@wiki in 1858. I think many artists might completely redevelop the palatte of scents, utilizing materials more readily available in the contemporary marketplace, but I found the scents chosen to have a deep familiarity and timelessness.
They even went through some of the neurology of their multi-modal art form, explaining that the olfactory system is much older than the parts of the brain we are accostomed to producing art to stimulate. I’m glad they did get a little sciency, the experience of the piece gave me burbling waves of thoughts, memories and sensations that I had a hard time processing.
Where exactly did they come from? Had those scents been there when those memories were formed? Was that a dream I had? Why am I crying?
The music itself was hypnotic, clearing space for scent to overlay and change the emotion evoked by the entrance of new musicians.
My broke ass lusted after the sheet music annotated with watercolors the entrance and exit of scent. Despite my now three jobs, I’m in a rent or food kind of situation. The $300 for this treasure of fine art was a little outside my grasp. To be frank, I probably shouldn’t have been driving up to LA for art, but I think there are some things in life worth dying a little bit.
You can see an image of the sheet music on Brian’s website
The following week, I met with Dr. Batya MacAdams-Somer for tea and ghormeh sabzi to talk about her experience practicing and performing this piece. Or at least we tried. I got some out of her about it. Namely that she found the scent distracting to staying present enough to play not-quite-repetative piece. She too was subject to the onslaught of vague thoughts and memories and emotions brought out by Brian
We just kept talking about the economics of art.
Batya’s frustration seeths at the idea that the business model of an art form must come before the art, the artist or the audience. Batya
How do you get an audience to serve? How Most artists seem to be defacto slaves to various social media outlets, not really developing any wealth on their own. Bars rely on booze. None of us have land.
A number of us seem to have full PA systems to run events.
Churches camp on a spacetime, you know, like every sunday.
Baby Bushka is a wonderful project that noticed an important change in the zeitgeist.
Caroling at the Safari park sounds like a delightful form of blue collar academia.
Ideas mull, we laugh darkly at who gets to decide who has value.
It seems we both try to fall into fun and play, but maybe do so in the cycles of overeager fervor and receding.
We make some loose plans to solve the issues in this country through art over a light game of bocce.