Scenting the Anosmic Cube: On the Use of Ambient Scent in theContext of the Art Gallery or Museum

摘要

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the possibility ofaugmenting the visitor’s experience of the exhibits in various artgalleries and museums by means of the delivery of a genuinelymultisensory experience, one that engages more than just the visualsense. This kind of approach both holds the promise of increasingengagement while, at the same time, also helping to address, in somesmall way, issues around accessibility for the visually impairedvisitor. One of the increasingly popular approaches to enhancingmultisensory experience design involves the use of scents that havebeen chosen to match, or augment, the art or museum display in someway. The various different kinds of congruency between olfaction andvision that have been investigated by researchers and/or incorporatedinto art/museum displays already are reviewed. However, while thelaboratory research does indeed appear to suggest that people’sexperience of the paintings (or rather reproductions or photos of theworks of art) may well be influenced by the presence of an ambientodour, the results are by no means guaranteed to be positive, eitherin terms of the emotional response while viewing the display or interms of the viewer’s subsequent recall of their multisensoryexperience. As such, caution is advised for those who may beconsidering whether to augment their multisensory displays/exhibitswith ambient scent.