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.
Jo Burzynska and Professor Anina Rich were interviewed about the Osmic Resonance project by Bec Dean for 
Montesarchio, Italy, October 2018
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists … the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
One of the central parts of my Culture at Work Art-Science residency was an audio-olfactory experiment in which I sought to identify correspondences between a selection of different sounds and aromas and gain insights into how these might be emotionally, conceptually or perceptually influenced. Past studies have identified sound-smell correspondences that people appear to share, and have started to examine what might be behind these. However, while the role of emotion has been explored and identified as one of the factors likely mediating audio-olfactory correspondences, no study to date has examined the personal associations and memories that may play a part in this. Given this gap, I was keen to incorporate this into my own research.
Assisting me in the experimental design, was my residency science partner, the cognitive neuroscientist and specialist in sensory processing and synaesthesia, Associate Professor Anina Rich of Macquarie University, and her colleague Mem Mahmut, a psychologist specialising in olfaction. On 19th July, 14 participants progressed round my series of ten “smelling stations”, where they’d rate an unidentified aroma for a number of characters. These characters included personal preference and perceptual characters such as harshness/softness. They were also asked to guess what they thought the aroma might be and whether the aroma evoked any personal associations or memories. A similar set of questions was asked for the six sound/music samples that were played over the course of the experiment. Participants went on to rate the match of each of the ten aromas that they encountered with each of the sound samples, and select a sound frequency level on a tone generator that they felt best matched each aroma.