World Sensorium

Berlin Wall

Nalls envisioned this concept for a “world scent” in 1989, eleven years prior to its completion and debut release. She describes the moment of inspiration for the formula as having occurred on December 28 of that year at the Brandenberg Gate, as the crowd pulled her on top of the Berlin Wall. As the connectivity passed through the bodies gathered, she envisioned a formula for World Sensorium where everyone would be counted.

Relationship to Permutatude Theory

World Sensorium was created for the aesthetic of mass anatomy to evoke global memory and to evolve a metabolic collective. Permutatude Theory and science form a significant background to the ongoing project, as do the processes of cultural transformation and globalization. As a theoretical construct, conceived to be an embodied consciousness of “one world” the olfactory sculpture critically engages individuals with their sense of smell, often in performative settings.

Determination of ingredients

Historical scents of all the countries of the world, culturally significant in medicine, mythology, the arts, anthropology, spiritual practices, diet and memory were identified based on survey research to obtain quantitative information that supplied the raw data for the creation of the scent, establishing the constituent natural plant oils “from tree, flower, grass or herb”.

Many of the plants were identified in local vernacular and required additional research to verify the Latin or English names. In some instances an English name did not exist. “Nalls located botanical taxonomy scholars from the New York Botanical Garden and ethno-botanists from the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii to assist in properly identifying the botanical names” materials which had been referred to in colloquial terms such as, Senegal: Gowe (Cyperus articulatus), no English name, and American Samoa: Mos’oi (Cananga odorata), English name Ylang-ylang.

“The goal was to have to have each flora’s complex molecular compositions represented in its entirety so as to be perceived by humans as closely as it would if it were experienced in its habitat, in order to evoke the same psychological ad emotional responses, and neurological and immune functions as in the traditions of the culture.” To this end all raw materials were derived straight from botanical sources by means of distillation or extraction.

Formula

The composition of these ingredients was based on projected population percentages for each individual country for the year 2000. Everyone was counted.

Global communications

In her quantitative research, Nalls crossed political boundaries in dialog with “countries the United States doesn’t get along with, such as Iran (rose), Iraq (date palm) Libya (orange blossom) and Cuba (tobacco).”

In some cases, communications spanned several months, but an especially “poignant moment in the creation of World Sensorium was the day the representative from the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Palestinian representative from the united Nations called Nalls by phone within minutes of each other to report that their national choices were both the Olive tree because of its long revered association with peace.”

Recognition and Honors

In 1998, in recognition of Nalls’ outstanding creative achievement, World Sensorium was endorsed by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and was granted sponsorship by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an original cultural initiative building goodwill and peace in conjunction with the United Nation’s International Year for Culture of Peace. In his letter to Nalls, Director-General, Dr. Federico Mayor, a brain biochemist, said that World Sensorium is a “highly original cultural initiative” that “will certainly contribute to creating a climate of goodwill and peace at this memorable moment in time” leading to “understanding and collaboration among nations”.

Olfactory Art and Aesthetics

With World Sensorium and more recent works, Nalls has advanced concepts of aesthetics to consider the olfactory sense over the historically privileged sense of vision. While the visual remains dominant, artists have and are now increasingly working with the sense of smell to produce emotionally and phenomenologically resonant works in the emergent genre of Olfactory Art. Nalls “like many other olfactory artists, uses only natural fragrances and essential oils. “I call it ‘rewilding the mind,’” she says.

Participatory Art

For Nalls, the connection between olfaction and social or participatory art is rooted in the evolutionary biology of the sense of smell. As the oldest sense, olfaction has the uncanny ability to trigger memory (individual and collective), and its significant role in chemosensory communication is critical to the collective action that is necessary for participatory social and art processes.

World Sensorium is a participatory project in its all-inclusive ethos, Nalls’ intention for its en masse experience, and in its very creation which at times required to assistance of volunteers to gather the phytogenic materials. “Randia aculeata an ingredient from the Netherlands Antilles, could only be found locally in Florida. A team was rushed to the site before Hurricane Lenny came in and swept through the area.” to harvest the leaves.

Avant-gardism and Political Art

In its use of extant culturally significant plant materials, Nalls advances the advant-garde notion that art should be brought closer to the praxis of life. World Sensorium is all-inclusive in its conception–a reflection of actual human-plant relations, making every experience of World Sensorium a connection to the world’s collective ecology and human consciousness. When experienced en masse as in Times Square, Nalls initiated a collective metabolic experience, and introduced a universal language for cross-cultural efforts toward peace, by evoking our co-evolution with nature. Ken Johnson called World Sensorium a "utopian project" and "an olfactory metaphor for world unity" by an "earnest and rather grandiose conceptualist".

Exhibition History

Additionally World Sensorium has been shown in group exhibitions in the United States, England, Sweden and Slovenia.