Assessing Oenosthesia: Blending Sound and Wine

Paper to be published in the International Journal of Food Design, 2018

Abstract
Recent developments in neuroscience and psychology have confirmed what many artists have long intuited, that our senses are connected. Research into crossmodal correspondences – the universal tendency of a sensory feature in one modality to be matched with one from another sensory modality – has highlighted strong connections between flavour and sound that has only just begun to be explored by artists working in these sensory realms. This paper investigates Oenosthesia, a practice-led art research project that aims to harness crossmodal correspondences in an artwork that combines a soundscape created from field recordings of the winemaking process with wines consumed as part of the piece. Its success in achieving this was tested through data gathered from participants at presentations of the work in London in September 2016 and in Sydney in March 2017. This paper presents the results of this study, which suggest that sound can significantly change perceptions of flavour and highlights the potential for the design of crossmodally congruent sound works that heighten specific flavour characters of a wine.

 

Oenosthesia: the international blend

This version of Oenosthesia was a remix of the original using wines and their sounds from different regions around the world. It was presented at Studio Sienko in London in September 2016 and Black Box, University of New South Wales Art & Design in Sydney in 2017, from which feedback was gathered for this study.