SPACIAl LOOPHOLE
ANA QUARESMA'S PORTFOLIO
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Nurturing Smell for Phillips
Manipulating the Perception of Smell
Collaboration with Diana Kovacheva for Phillips Wellbeing Project.
Why do people perceive the smell of roses to be pink and romantic?
Why do people perceive the smell of the sea to be blue and peaceful?
This project questions the correlation between smell/colour and emotion. Smells are stored in the long-term memory section and have a strong connection to memories. The perception of smell and colour are learned through visual and familiar associations, therefore they are expressed very easily. Through research people’s memories of positive and negative experience related to smell and colour, data was collected in order to create a colour-scent-spectrum. 
All colours have a duality in their emotional perception – red can be associated with a negative experience as much as with a positive one. However, the “positive” colours contain greater amount of light.
The smell of hospital detergent, roses, old parfumes, fresh gras, milk, sea, cars, cheese, freshly baked bread, spring rain, sun lotion, sugar, burning oil, chocolate, glue, chewing gums, and even the smell of home – they all have a specific colour in peoples memory.
What if we would reverse the expirience of expected colour-scent-combinations? What if milk smelled blue? Would we associate milk with the preconceived ideas of the colour blue, or would the semiotic of blue change? Could we decode the relationship between smell and colour and change emotional experiences?
We have the freedom to decide about which music we hear, which TV programme or magazine we see, which food we taste, but smell seam to exist without much of our influense. Imagine to be able to control smell. Imagine to never experience the negative memory of “hospital smell” again. Would the perception of this experience change?
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