| The
Column is a monthly feature that explores the world
of creativity and aesthetics.
Good Taste, Bad
Art
Mike
de Sousa, Director, AbleStable
The cooperative senses of taste and smell
provide pleasure and warn of danger. Their impact
in the arts is less significant however as
compared with the dominant senses of sight,
and hearing. This column
investigates the importance of taste and smell
in the context of creativity, and aims to shed
light on these senses which seem confined to
our primal sensibilities.
No
art forms exist which are based on the senses
of touch, taste, or smell. However touch is an
intrinsic part of the creation and experience
of several creative disciplines like sculpture
and choreography. In my view touch
should be regarded as a distinct sense that merits
separate
consideration in a future column.
The
Primal Senses
The
two "functional
senses" of taste and smell are the
only ones to benefit from cell replacement
when the sense receptors
become old or damaged. This points to their
evolutionary significance.
Our
sense of taste protects our body from unsafe
foods and helps maintain
a consistent chemical balance in our body. Liking
sugar and salt for example, satisfies our body's
need for carbohydrates and minerals. Similarly,
eating sour foods such as oranges and lemons
supplies our body with essential vitamins.
There
are five types of tastes which are commonly recognized
by humans:
| Sweet |
This
taste usually
indicates the consumption of energy rich nutrients.
Sugar is almost universally regarded as a
pleasurable
taste. |
| Salty |
Sodium
helps to maintain the concentration of body
fluids at correct levels. It also plays a
central role in the transmission of electrical
impulses in the nerves, and helps cells to
take up nutrients. |
| Sour |
Typically
the taste of acids. To maintain health, the human
diet should consist of 60% alkaline forming
foods
and 40% acid forming foods. Human blood pH should
be slightly alkaline ( 7.35 - 7.45 ). A pH
of 7.0 is neutral. A pH below 7.0 is acidic.
A pH above 7.0 is alkaline. |
| Bitter |
Bitterness
allows
us to sense a diversity of natural toxins. |
| Umami |
The
taste of amino acids. Savouriness is the
name for the taste sensation produced by
the free glutamates commonly found in fermented
and aged foods. In English, it is sometimes
described as "meaty" or "savoury".
In Japanese, the term umami is
used for this taste sensation, whose characters
literally mean "delicious flavor." Umami
is also now the commonly used term by taste
scientists. |
Olfaction
is the sense of smell and the detection of chemicals
dissolved
in air. Mammals have a highly developed sense of
smell as many land animals are carnivores and
smell helps in the hunt or in their defense.
In contrast, the majority of birds have
no sense
of smell at all.
Nearly
every human being displays a different pattern
of
active and inactive odour-detecting receptors.
This explains why we have very different likes
and dislikes of food and drink. There are also
more complex processes that are at work when
we taste
and smell.
Labelling
an unpleasant smell for example with a more appealing
name can improve its aroma.
Olfaction,
taste and trigeminal receptors together contribute
to flavor (the trigeminal nerve is responsible
for sensation in the face).
The
Creative Senses
Taste and smell are referred to in many creative
activities as they are part of the human experience,
however taste and smell are rarely intrinsically
connected with creative mediums. For example,
taste
may be alluded to in a play, but it is not a
required sense for either the play's composition
or performance.
The
table below shows the relationship between
our
senses
and
creative
activity.
You may also be interested to View
the Disciplines
associated with the creative areas shown below:
| Creative
Area |
Sight
|
Hearing
|
Touch
|
Smell
|
Taste
|
| |
•
|
both
a sensory and cerebral activity |
| |
[ • ]
|
primarily
required in the creative process |
| |
|| • ||
|
primarily
a cerebral activity |
| |
" • "
|
may
be referred to |
| Buildings |
• |
• |
• |
• |
|
| Crafts |
• |
" • " |
• |
|
|
| Dance |
• |
• |
[ • ] |
" • " |
" • " |
| Design |
• |
• |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
| Exhibitions |
• |
• |
• |
• |
• |
| Film |
• |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
" • " |
| Illustration |
• |
" • " |
[ • ] |
" • " |
" • " |
| Multimedia |
• |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
" • " |
| Music |
|
• |
[ • ] |
|
|
| Music
Video |
• |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
" • " |
| Photography |
• |
" • " |
[ • ] |
" • " |
" • " |
| Radio |
" • " |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
" • " |
| Television |
• |
• |
" • " |
" • " |
" • " |
| Theatre |
• |
• |
" • " |
• |
" • " |
| Visual
Art |
• |
" • " |
[ • ] |
" • " |
" • " |
| Writing |
|| • || |
|| • || |
|| • || |
|| • || |
|| • || |
The
World Of The Beautiful
The
term aesthetics comes from the Greek " " "aisthetike" and
was coined by the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten in 1735 to mean "the science
of how things are known via the senses.".
Today the word "aesthetic" means:
• The
branch of philosophy that deals with the nature
and expression of beauty.
• The
branch of metaphysics concerned with the laws of
perception.
• The
study of the psychological responses to beauty
and artistic experiences.
• A
conception of what is artistically valid or beautiful.
• An
artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance.
Can
a taste or smell be beautiful? Perhaps by association,
but not in itself. Tastes and smells can however
be intensely pleasurable.
The
Boundaries of Art
Taste
and smell are subjective, perceived immediately,
and envelope us with their
chemical
affect. Their powerful erotic aspect may restrict
the realm of what may be considered aesthetic.
One either has to be close to taste or smell,
or the taste or small is so all-powerful
in the environment as to dominate ones experience.
Taste
and smell do not lend themselves easily to compositional
manipulation, and no one to
my knowledge has been successful in developing
a consistent method of conveying emotion through
taste and smell, despite the positive
and negative
associations
we have of certain kinds of tastes and smells.
Art
requires a medium to connect with its audience.
The mediums of light and sound can be easily
used and stored in a broad range of physical
contexts. From paint on canvas, to MP3s on thumb
drives. The personal physicality
of taste and
smell
contrasts
with the
recorded or performed nature
of
the art medium.
It
is also difficult to transport and deliver
tastes and smells to a large audience
with any
consistency or continuity. Taste is an intimate
sensation, and all but the most pungent
of smalls dissipate with the lightest
of breezes. The banquet hall may be a place
of exquisite
delight,
and
the phrase "culinary
art" is often used to describe its products,
yet it is clear that creating a recipe
and cooking a meal lacks the essential
essence of that which defines art.
Some
argue the reason touch and smell do
not feature in the art of our world is
because we are are not able to keep a distance
from the subjective character of the experience
in order to adopt a critical and reflective
attitude, a basic presupposition of the
aesthetic experience.
Art
is the product of human creative activity which
often holds special significance. It
seems the inability to convey spiritual and
metaphorical messages,
separates taste and smell from the world of art,
but the power
of taste and smell to transport you to a time and
place is undeniable, and
the future will I believe bring change.
Perhaps
technologies will be developed that will
allow us to more
easily capture, manipulate, and deliver tastes
and smells to an audience. The movie or game
of the future may then become a more all encompassing
sensory experience than we might ever imagine...
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