Understanding the tight connections between human dwelling and the sense of smell seems nowadays urgent. Since human being-in-the-world finds its very prerequisite in being-in-the-air, an inquiry on air design, today particularly intrusive, is a philosophical necessity. The aim of this contribution is to sketch an exploratory investigation on the aesthetic relationships between space, smell and gendered atmospheres through the case of food, specifically through its osmosphere: its flavour as its affective aura. Firstly, I discuss analogies between atmospheres and smells. Secondly, (...) I proceed by presenting olfactory devices whose aim is conveying gendered food-related and emotional atmospheres, scrutinising the phenomenological intertwining between food, cooking, gender, ‘sense of home’ and the olfactory imaginary of the matter. Finally, I put forward some observations which weave together aerial dwelling and ecological thought. (shrink)

Initially conceived as an interview with the hybrid media artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter, this text gradually took the form of a conversation on various issues regarding olfactory art and the aesthetic significance of smell. Framing the artistic uses of odours in the context of contemporary art, the paper discloses some of its foundational traits, variations, and underlying impulses. By commenting on Goeltzenleuchter’s olfactory artworks through a philosophical perspective, this contribution covers a number of subjects including the notion of atmosphere, the socio-cultural (...) values and narratives conveyed by scents, the suggestive relationship between spaces and aromas, and the phenomenology of smells as compared to the experience of sounds. Consistent with how smell perception unfolds, the dialogue flows in a form that is not rigidly structured but airy, ephemeral, and fluid, developing a sequence of insights whose aim is, rather than scrutinising a specific topic, to evoke the essence of olfactory poetics as a whole. (shrink)