Sissel Tolaas was born in 1965 in Stavanger Norway. Her practice is based in Berlin. Tolaas has background in chemistry; mathematics, linguistics; languages and art, from the universities of Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, St Petersburg and Oxford.
Tolaas is working actively and concentrated on the topic of smell, smell and language, and communication since 1990, within different sciences, fields of art /design and other disciplines. Tolaas established the SMELL RE_searchLab Berlin, on smell & communication / language, in Berlin in January 2004, supported by IFF.
Lecture description:
I believe that smells are a VERY crucial component in the definition, understanding of and orientation to an environment. Smells surround us all the time. We breathe 23,040 times a day and move 12.5 cubic meters of air and with every breath smell molecules flood through our bodies. Even when we sleep we smell. We live in a world of total antisepsis and a continuous wholesale deodorization, and it match a worldwide homogeneity of faceless glass buildings. Because all environmental smells cannot be pleasant, the consequences could be, we will have non at all! OR, we want to change? Historical, sociological and religious reasons have pulled the contemporary human being into almost ignoring more than 1 % of his genes! ONLY education can revive these hidden capacities, since the hardware and software still function in the healthy human being, but only if consciously trained and used. There is a whole world to educate and a whole world to smell!
For more information about Sissel's work please click here
