Author Archives: Stanier Black-Five

Talking about wine and sound

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Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a number of broadcasters about my work and research into wine and sound. Here are links to some of them here:

I spoke to Annaliese Redlich for her fascination All Ears podcast series that explores the ways music challenges, comforts and connects us. I’m the second half of this programme.

It was great to go into some detail with Emilie Steckenborn for the Bottled in China podcast.

A little earlier I caught up with Daniel Brennan for Vintage Stories during my Osmic Resonance audio-olfactory art exhibition at Sydney’s Accelerator Gallery.

I’m currently working on lots of exciting multisensory projects which I will endeavour to share on this site in the weeks to come. If you want to sign up to my mailing list, please contact me here.

Risonanze di Vino – book published

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Risonanze di Vino cover smallRisonanze di Vino:
Exploring the Sensory Terroir of Rural Italy

Editor: Jo Burzynska
Contributors: Jo Burzynska, Gaetano Carboni, Leandro Pisano
Publisher: Interferenze Book Series

Risonanze di Vino, a book documenting two of my wine and sound projects in Italy, has now been published as part of the Interferenze Book Series and is available to purchase here.

About Risonanze di Vino
Risonanze di Vino explores the multiple connections made through a series of artist residencies in rural Italy that unite the senses, culture, and nature, as framed within discussions of the Anthropocene. It documents the residencies – conducted as creative sensory research – through which the multisensory artist Jo Burzynska, identifies and tunes resonances between sound and wine through an interlaced sensuous system that she calls sensory terroir.

Credit: Daniela d'Arielli / Pollinaria

Credit: Daniela d’Arielli / Pollinaria

Organised by the Interferenze art research platform in the Irpinia and Sannio regions, and the Pollinaria agricultural residency programme in Abruzzo, the projects were oriented by the artist’s immersions in cultural and personal sensory experience within these agrarian environments. The residencies resulted in sense-focused artworks in which soundscapes – created from field recordings of the winegrowing environments – play in crossmodal harmony or conversation with the local wines.

IMG_5851The projects are contextualised within current discourse around the Anthropocene through the curatorial contributions from Interferenze’s Leandro Pisano and Pollinaria’s Gaetano Carboni. If the Anthropocene is a sensorial phenomenon, sound art could be well placed to expose symbiotic coexistences and initiate resonances that shift perceptions.

Seeking red wine consumers for sound and wine study

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Wine & Sound logoWe are looking for participants to take part in a new study on how sound might affect the perception of wine characters. No specialised wine knowledge or experience is required. This study forms part of the student researcher, Jo Burzynska’s PhD.

Study name: The effect of sound on the perception of wine characters
Ethics (HREC) Approval: H-2018-270

If you participate, you will be given red wines to taste and music to listen to and asked to respond to questions that relate to these experiences. The experiment is a single session that should take around 45 minutes. Participants will be entered into a draw with a one in three chance of winning wine on the day of the session. 

The experiment will be conducted at 2pm and 6pm on 30th & 31st July, 1st, 2nd, 5th & 6th August, at the Wine Innovation Central Building 29 (WIC) level 4, at Waite Campus (corner Hartley Grove and Paratoo Road, 5064 Urrbrae). Click here for a map.

NB – We have added some new sessions at 4pm on 2nd, 5th & 6th August

Important: To take part you must be:

·       Over 18 years of age

·       Comfortable with consuming a small amount of alcohol (spitoons provided)

·       Do not suffer or have suffered from any taste, olfactory or auditory dysfunction

·       Do not have any allergies related to red wine consumption, sulphur dioxide or yeast

·       Do not have any past or present alcohol dependency issues

·       Not pregnant

·       Not taking any medication that could interact with alcohol

Participation in any research study is voluntary. If you do not want to take part, you do not have to and your participation, non-participation or withdrawal will not impact your relationship with any of the researchers or institutions involved in this study.

If you would like to participate, please complete the pre-study screening questionnaire at this link, which also provides more detailed participant information about the study:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RPDPVTX

At the end of this questionnaire, you will be provided with the following doodle link through which to book your session, also included here: https://doodle.com/poll/5b69irr76es8xe8n. Please note that you need to complete the SurveyMonkey questionnaire before making your booking. If you want to book a new 4pm slot, please contact Jo Burzynska via the contact form below to book after you have finished the SurveyMonkey questionnaire.

If you know anyone who might also be interested in participating, please feel free to forward them this invitation. If you have any questions, please contact Jo Burzynska via the contact form below. If you would like my email and phone number for reference, please contact me through this form as well and I will send these to you.

Taste the Bass

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Want to boost the body of your Pinot Noir, then turn up the bass!

The latest paper from my Center Clustercurrent doctoral research exploring the sensory and aesthetic interactions between wine and sound has been published in Multisensory Research. The product of a great project that involved Professor Charles Spence and Dr Janice Wang at Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory, with input from my co-supervisor at the University of Adelaide, Associate Professor Sue Bastian.

Taste the Bass: Low Frequencies Increase the Perception of Body and Aromatic Intensity in Red Wine

Authors: Jo Burzynska, Qian Janice Wang, Charles Spence  and Susan Elaine Putnam Bastian

Associations between heaviness and bass/low-pitched sounds reverberate throughout music, philosophy, literature, and language. Given that recent research into the field of cross-modal correspondences has revealed a number of robust relationships between sound and flavour, this exploratory study was designed to investigate the effects of lower frequency sound (10 Hz to 200 Hz) on the perception of the mouthfeel character of palate weight/body. This is supported by an overview of relevant cross-modal studies and cultural production. Wines were the tastants — a New Zealand Pinot Noir and a Spanish Garnacha — which were tasted in silence and with a 100 Hz (bass) and a higher 1000 Hz sine wave tone. Aromatic intensity was included as an additional character given suggestions that pitch may influence the perception of aromas, which might presumably affect the perception of wine body. Intensity of acidity and liking were also evaluated. The results revealed that the Pinot Noir wine was rated as significantly fuller-bodied when tasted with a bass frequency than in silence or with a higher frequency sound. The low frequency stimulus also resulted in the Garnacha wine being rated as significantly more aromatically intense than when tasted in the presence of the higher frequency auditory stimulus. Acidity was rated considerably higher with the higher frequency in both wines by those with high wine familiarity and the Pinot Noir significantly better liked than the Garnacha. Possible reasons as to why the tones used in this study affected perception of the two wines differently are discussed. Practical application of the findings are also proposed.

Full paper available at Multisensory Research.



Take part in a sound and wine/aroma study (Sydney & Adelaide)

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I am recruiting participants for studies in Sydney and Adelaide during 2019 investigating how sound might affect the perception of aroma or wine flavour characters (details below). If you are interested in taking part in these future studies (either audio-olfactory or wine and sound), you can register your interest by contacting me using the form below. Please specify your city and the study/ies in which you might be able to participate.

 

Sydney studies
We are recruiting participants for a studies investigating how sound might affect the perception of flavour characters in audio-gustatory artworks or aroma characters in audio-olfactory artworks. If you participate, you will listen to a number of sounds/music works and either taste a small amount of red and white wine or smell some aromas, about which you will be asked a series of questionnaire-based questions. The experiment will take a total of one hour. The studies are being conducted as part of PhD research at UNSW and has been approved by university Human Research Ethics Committee (Refs: HC180394 and H180473).

To take part, you must be aged over 18 (and provide ID to prove this), be comfortable with consuming a small (125ml) amount of wine in the wine study (spittoons will be provided) or smell no more that 15 aromas. We require you to be in good health and have a normal sense of smell, taste and audition. The wine study is not suitable for those who have allergies to wine/alcohol; are on any medications that could interact with alcohol; are pregnant or have past or current issues with alcohol dependency.

 

Adelaide study: The effect of sound on the perception of wine characters
HREC Approval: H-2018-270

Investigators: Assistant Professor Susan Bastian, University of Adelaide School of Agriculture, Food and Wine (Chief Investigator), Joanna Burzynska, UNSW Art & Design (Student Investigator), Professor Douglas Kahn, UNSW Art & Design (Co-Investigator) and Dr Lukas Danner, University of Adelaide School of Agriculture, Food and Wine (Co-Investigator).

We are looking for participants to take part in a new study on how sound might effect the perception of wine characters. This study forms part of the student researcher, Jo Burzynska’s PhD. If you participate, you will be given red wines to taste and sounds/music to listen to and asked to respond to questions that relate to these experiences. The experiment takes about 30 minutes (and you will be entered into a draw to wine some wine).

Important: To take part you must be:

Over 18 years of age
Are comfortable with consuming a small amount of alcohol (approx. 125ml – spitoons provided)
Do not suffer or have suffered from any taste, olfactory or auditory dysfunction
Do not have any allergies related to red wine consumption, sulphur dioxide or yeast
Do not have any past or present alcohol dependency issues
Are not pregnant
Are not taking any medication that could interact with alcohol
Participation in any research study is voluntary. If you do not want to take part, you do not have to and your participation, non-participation or withdrawal will not impact your relationship with any of the researchers or institutions involved in this study.