Osmodrama Festival Berlin 2016

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The electronic scent organ Smeller 2.0 will be installed in the central art space St. Johannes Evangelist Church from July 15th to September 18th, 2016. In this nine-week event series, the Osmodrama Festival combines the presentational formats of performance, exhibition and lab work. Wolfgang Georgsdorf, the inventor of Smeller 2.0 and originator of the „Osmodrama“ art form, is working in cooperation with the International Literature Festival Berlin and the Radialsystem V, as well as renowned artists like Edgar Reitz, Omer Fast and Eva Mattes to establish new forms of performance: pure compositions of smell sequences, or combinations of scent with sound, music, film, dance and literature.

What is Osmodrama?

Osmodrama is an interdisciplinary project that introduces a new artistic genre: compositions of precise smell sequences that are performed alone, or in interaction with other art forms. In Berlin, the goal of this pioneering project is to establish this new mode of expression – storytelling with smells and scents.

What is Smeller 2.0?

Smeller 2.0 is an electronically controlled scent organ, constructed to create smell sequences. This functional instrument was developed by Wolfgang Georgsdorf in collaboration with experts from fields such as perfuming, olfactory science, ventilation engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science. In 2012 Smeller 2.0 was first installed and run at the OK-Center for Contemporary Arts in Linz, Austria. Smeller 2.0 weighs 1.6 tons and presently has 64 smell channels available, through which controlled airstreams and prepared smells can be injected into a room, in a predetermined sequence.

The Smell of Future

The sense of smell as the deepest sense meets visual and auditive arts at eye level. With the introduction of Smeller 2.0 the olfactory dimensions of our perception can be experienced in a whole new way. Time-based smell composition opens up so far unexplored possibilities for artistic expression and communication. The Osmodrama Festival in Berlin is the first interdisciplinary platform for scientists, artists, philosophers, and guests from all over the world, to experience this new synesthetic space.

Voices:

„Wolfgang Georgsdorf premiered a smell movie with an important distinction: It works.“
(John Laurenson, BBC)

„The Jules Vernes of olfaction“
(Max Rauner, Zeit Wissen)

„A forest in spring, a street in the rain, a summer day at the lake; the artist and inventor Wolfgang Georgsdorf has built the prototype of a smelling machine“
(Klaus Lüber, Süddeutsche Zeitung)

„In order to distribute smells in a room, to make them disappear, even use them like musical tones with virtuosity in quick succession … that requires an unparalleled manipulation of space“
(Karlheinz Schmid, Kunstzeitung)

„I have seen some images of the savanna… it comes to my mind like a dream.“
(Patrick Javault, Kurator und Kunstkritiker)

„How unbelievably strong it seems to effect my sense of memory!“
(Frank Dodge, Gründer und Künstlerischer Leiter von „Spectrum Concerts“, Philharmonie Berlin)

„You think that is actually moss, soil, it is all real.“
(Eva Mattes, Actress)