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.
Date: Tuesday 11th December
Times: 6-7pm
Venue: UNSW Paddington Campus, Sydney
We are recruiting participants for a study investigating how sound might affect the perception of flavour characters in audio-gustatory artworks. If you participate, you will listen to a number of sounds/music works and taste a small amount of red and white wine, about which you will be asked a series of questionnaire-based questions. The experiment will take a total of one hour. The study is being conducted as part of PhD research at UNSW and has been approved by university Human Research Ethics Committee (Ref: HC180394).
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 (spittoons will be provided). We require you to be in good health and have a normal sense of smell, taste and audition. This 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. If you fit these criteria and would like to take part, please contact Jo Burzynska using the form below.
For those participating that are interested, this will be followed by an informal wine and music/sound matching presentation at 7pm.
Please feel free to share with any friends who you think might be interested.
Live audio-olfactory performance
28th January, 2018 – NOW Now Festival, Sydney, Australia
28th April, 2018 – Selectors’ Records, Vancouver, Canada
“When Locomotion No1 made the world’s first commercial steam journey in 1825 it created the first movement in the history of the railways, and of a whole body of musical work inspired by the iron horse’s subsequent noisy passage through the world’s once peaceful open country. While the train came to symbolise order, progress and freedom, its potential for unpredictability and disaster on the other – from runaway trains to derailments and crashes – evoked a mixture of fear and fascination reflected in and provoked by some of the sublime musical journeys which have incorporated its aural imagery.
Jo Burzynska, “The Sound of Steam.” Noisegate 13 (2006).
In preparation for the performance
Jump on board for a dromological journey illuminated by the sonic, kinetic and olfactory energy of locomotion and landscapes passed through at speed. In this live audio-olfactory performance – which follows the Stanier Black-Five vinyl release of Alone with the Black Spirits on the UK’s Rail Cables last year – I’m returning to my longstanding fascination with trains in my first ever rail-based work in Australia and featuring aromatic elements. The sound component will use my field recordings of trains made around the world, which is entwined with a congruent shifting aromascape that I’ve blended that applies my own and existing research into crossmodal correspondences, the universal tendency of a sensory feature in one modality to be matched with one from another sensory modality.
A few copies of the Rail Cables vinyl still available to purchase.
Experience the fascinating transformations that occur when wine and sound combine at the inaugural Australian presentation of Jo Burzynska’s Oenosthesia, sound and wine project. Created from blending a soundscape of recordings made from the winemaking process with wines tasted during the piece, the work will premiere in Sydney on 1st March 2017 as part of the launch of the Writing Around Sound journal that Jo co-edits.
In Oenosthesia, Jo explores the way in which sound influences the perception of a wine’s taste and texture through the changing timbres and frequencies of the sonic element in combination with different styles of wine tasted during the work. Oenosthesia brings together Jo’s two professional interests as a sound artist and wine writer to create a unique experience based on the science of sensory interaction. The work was initially created as an installation from a “Suoni dal confine” artist residency in Irpinia, Italy and premiered at the Interferenze New Art Festival’s Factory of Art Rurality and Media 2012 in Tufo, Italy. It has since been presented at Rome’s MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, at Studio Sienko in London and at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Physics Room Gallery in New Zealand.
Jo is currently engaged in research into the interaction of sound and taste as part of a PhD at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). This presentation is being made as part of this research, with participants invited to provide feedback via a short questionnaire at the end of the work.
Jo Burzynska has a career spanning two decades in wine and sonic art. As a wine writer and wine judge she has contributed to wine magazines and competitions internationally and is the author of the book, Wine Class (Random House). She is also an active sound artist, whose work in recent years has increasingly drawn on her interest in taste and olfaction in projects that include multisensory installations and performances, as well as establishing of the world’s first “oenosthetic” bar at The Auricle in New Zealand where she matched wines with the exhibitions and the sounds in the space. She also writes on sound and has had articles published in magazines such as The Wire and is the co-editor of Writing Around Sound sonic arts journal, the third issue of which is launched at this event.
While in LA I took the opportunity to catch up with cognitive scientists Carmel Levitan and Sasha Sherman at their multisensory lab at Occidental College. I was keen to learn more about their research into sensory interaction given Carmel’s previous research into crossmodal correspondences between music, odour and emotion and Sasha’s interest in the brain and art.
As well as pursuing their own research in the multisensory labs, Carmel and Sasha use with students to study how the different senses interact to influence a range of perceptual and cognitive states, and the role of social and emotional factors in mediating these states.
Sasha demonstrated an interesting experiment investigating whether priming participants with the same rhythm before a task made them work better together in performing it. With Carmel I sniffed some of the unfamiliar scents created for one of her olfactory experiments – Sasha’s dog Nacho also got in on the act, who I suggested likely had the best nose in the room. However, they told me about a study that suggested that the power human’s sense of smell could be more akin to a dog’s if our noses were closer to floor level!
I discussed with them my hopes that the crossmodal congruency between the smells and sounds that I would be using in my project at the Institute for Art and Olfaction would result in bringing different elements of its scent component to the fore. We also discussed the issue of olfactory adaptation, which is when you stop smelling something after prolonged contact. I’d aimed to keep the sound piece I’d made fairly short, but at around 12 minutes, one would expect this to occur. However, I wondered if sounds could retrigger the perception of smells within the work.
It was a great meeting with some exciting common research interests that may well develop into future arts-science collaborations.
Date: Tuesday 11th December
