CALL FOR PAPERS
*OLFACTION and Preservation*
Special issue co-edited by Adam Jasper and Jorge Otero-Pailos
Deadline September 30th, 2015
Future Anterior invites essays that explore the relationship between
olfaction and preservation from historical, theoretical and critical
perspectives. We seek scholarly papers that take stock of the recent surge
of interdisciplinary research on olfaction and speculate on its relevance
and impact on the practice of preservation.
Whether deodorized or artificially scented, the olfactory signature of
historic buildings is rarely haphazard. Yet the conscious practice of
altering smells in order to influence how visitors experience heritage is
rarely subjected to serious scholarly scrutiny. In part this might be due
to the fact that most preservationists lack training in olfaction. This
deficiency is arguably cultural and as old as preservation itself. In 1857
the English polymath George William Septimus Piesse wrote: “Of the five
senses, that of smelling is the least valued, and, as a consequence, is the
least tutored; but we must not conclude from this, our own act that it is
of insignificant importance to our welfare and happiness.” Piesse was
writing during a period in which miasmatic theories of disease transmission
held sway. He believed training the nose was useful for detecting
disease-carrying airs. Whereas the 18th and 19th centuries had a horror of
the effects of the stagnation of air, in contemporary hygiene aesthetics,
the sterile separation of spaces via glass and ceramic tiles is privileged.
To what extent can historical case studies of public beliefs (justified or
not) regarding odor, hygiene and disease inform an understanding of
interior space, and its concomitant implications for architectural
preservation?
Today, we think of the uses of olfaction more in terms of enhancing memory
and recollection, as advances in neuroscience have taught us that the
region of the brain that processes smell is the limbic system, which is
directly linked to the hippocampus and the amygdala, where emotions are
registered and memories stored. The powerful connection between smell,
memory, and emotions encouraged preservationists to experiment with
scenting historic sites in the 1980s. A pioneering example is the Jorvik
Viking Center in York, England, designed by John Sunderland, who
conceptualized smell as a central element of what he called “time warp
experiences.” Papers may examine the history, successes and failures of
olfactory design in preservation projects. To what degree did the
introduction of manufactured smells as part of historic buildings reinforce
or challenge previous conceptions of preservation? For example, how could
the focus on smell inflect debates about the authenticity of historic
buildings?
Papers might also consider whether the construction of smells can be
thought of as part of the history of building technology, and the modern
pursuit of the well tempered and attractively scented environment. Whether
deceitful or not, the reality is that we are in the midst of an explosion
in the use of unique fragrances in branded spaces, such as luxury hotels or
retail spaces. How can we square off the experimental preservation uses of
smell with the wider contemporary trend to scent commercial environments?
The scenting of historic sites can be, and often is, dismissed as a gimmick
to attract more visitors. Papers can examine why historically smell has
been so easily employed or construed as a deceitful lure. If the low
evidentiary value attributed to smell is due to the difficulty in
objectifying or documenting it, this status should change. It is now
possible to document the smells of contemporary buildings and to archive
them along with more traditional records such as photographs and
architectural drawings. A transformative moment in the history of smell
technology was Roman Kaiser’s invention of Headspace in the 1970s, which
automated the field documentation of smells, and made it possible to
artificially emulate practically any smell.
What standards should this emerging documentary practice follow? What
schemata are available for the categorization of historic smells? The
language of smell is here a central concern. The description of smells
proceeds entirely via euphemism. As Kant wrote in *Reflexionen zur
Anthropologie*, “all the senses have their own descriptive vocabularies,
e.g. for sight, there is red, green, and yellow, and for taste there is
sweet and sour, etc. But the sense of smell can have no descriptive
vocabulary of its own. Rather, we borrow our adjectives from the other
senses, so that it smells sour, or has a smell like roses or cloves or
musk. They are all, however, terms drawn from other senses. Consequently,
we cannot describe our sense of smell.” Would it be appropriate to
categorize the smell of historic buildings according to their visual styles
(eg. Gothic, Barroque, Neo-classical, Art Deco, Modernist, etc)?
Within flavors and fragrance companies, "fragrance wheels"—in which
families of smells are arranged in an analog of the spectrum of visible
colors—are often used as mnemonic and communicative devices. Other schemes
array scents on musical scales, or in n-dimensional space. We also have
taxonomies of scents from Carl Linnaeus (1756), Zwaardemaker (1895),
Crocker and Henderson (1927), and Jellinek (1951), amongst many others. The
enormous variety of such representations, which may be indispensable in the
effective communication of olfactory experience, attests to their current
insufficiency. What developments are to be expected on this front? Can the
conventional language of smell be satisfactorily formalized for
professional preservation use?
In recent years, studies of the smells of decomposing materials point to a
promising new form of non-destructive testing for historic architecture,
and a new science of “material degradomics.” Exemplary applications include
the “Heritage Smells!” project led by Lorraine T. Gibson, which analyzes
the gases emitted by heritage objects to establish their state of decay. The
ambitious project involves scientists and conservators from the British
Museum, the University of Strathclyde, University College London, the
National Records of Scotland, English Heritage and the British Library.
What are the current limits to, and the necessary preconditions for the
technological study of olfaction for architectural preservation? What new
possibilities are offered by corpus analysis, data mining and other
research techniques in the digital humanities in determining historical
perceptions and theories of smell? How can these techniques best be
disseminated, applied and critiqued?
Papers might examine the long history that precedes the current interest in
measuring decomposition through smell. One interesting precedent is the
Henning Odor Prism, or Henning Olfactory Prism (1915–1916). While scents
may have much in common, according to the Henning prism they differentiate
themselves from each other in their odor profile during decomposition. The
Henning Prism therefore suggests the possibility of charting “smell
trajectories,” that is, the characteristic changes in smell as a perfume’s
volatile top note lifts to reveal its middle and base note, as a fruit
ripens, or as an organic product undergoes metabolic decomposition. What
are the prospects for developing an understanding of how the smell of a
building will naturally change over time?
We also welcome papers that examine the relationship between olfaction and
urban preservation. From the characteristic odors of the Renaissance city,
through the great stenches of London and Paris in the nineteenth century,
to the rise in synthetic deodorants in the twentieth, the smell of the
historical city undergoes change. As Rudolph el-Khoury writes in *Polish
and Deodorize*, "Urban historians have indeed spoken of a Copernican
revolution in the Enlightenment's conception of a city. Beauty, once the
governing principle of urbanism, is claimed to have been overthrown by
health, hygiene and physiology". In particular, the public fear of disease
engendering miasmas, and more specifically the telluric emanations of
interior walls, had a significant impact on both urban planning (Haussmann’s
sewers) and interior architecture (in particular wallpaper) in 18th century
France. To what extent is the sense of smell, our tolerance of certain
odors, its thresholds and affective categories, also historically
determined?
Future Anterior invites papers from scholars in preservation and its allied
fields (architectural history, art history, anthropology, archeology,
geography, chemistry, engineering, political science, juridical studies,
urban studies, and planning) that explore these and related questions from
a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Future Anterior is a peer-reviewed journal that approaches the field of
historic preservation from a position of critical inquiry. A comparatively
recent field of professional study, preservation often escapes direct
academic challenges of its motives, goals, forms of practice and results.
Future Anterior invites contributions that ask these difficult questions
from philosophical, theoretical, and practical perspectives.
Articles submitted for peer review should be no more than 4000 words, with
up to seven illustrations. Text must be formatted in accordance with the
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition. All articles must be submitted in
English, and spelling should follow American convention. All submissions
must be submitted electronically. Text should be saved as Microsoft Word or
RTF format, while accompanying images should be sent as TIFF files with a
resolution of at least 300 dpi at 8” by 9”print size. Figures should be
numbered and called out clearly between paragraphs in the text. Image
captions and credits must be included with submissions. It is the
responsibility of the author to secure permissions for image use and pay
any reproduction fees. A brief author biography (around 100 words) must
accompany the text.
For further manuscript guidelines, please visit:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/journals/futureanterior/fa_msguidelines.html
Acceptance or rejection of submissions is at the discretion of the editors.
Please do not send original materials, as submissions will not be returned.
Please email all submissions to:
[log in to unmask]
Questions about submissions can be mailed to the above address or emailed
to:
Jorge Otero-Pailos
Founder and Editor, Future Anterior
Jo2050 at columbia dot edu <[log in to unmask]>
or
Adam Jasper, Guest Co-Editor
Adamjasper at gmail dot com
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