Scientist, Rachel Herz: My name is Rachel Herz. I am a neuroscientist. I study the sense of smell and and also the connection to emotional memory. You’re exploring an installation by the artist Mike Kelley called Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites.
This is a really interesting installation formed from lots of different colored plush toys that are clustered together and suspended from the ceiling. Along the walls of this installation are these geometric objects that are emitting a Pine-Sol cleaner scent, hence the title of the piece, Deodorized.
The relationship between smell and emotion is unique and direct, because the part of the brain that processes emotion and the part of the brain where we experience the awareness of scent is exactly the same. And none of our other sensory experiences is connected to emotion in the same way.
So anytime we experience a scent, we also experience emotion, at least at some level. And the reason that a certain scent may trigger a specific emotion is actually to do with that individual’s personal past history with that scent.
Here with Mike Kelley’s installation, we have the smell of pine, which, for some people could be, “I remember the smell from childhood, it’s a cleaning smell my parents used.” But it could also be this jarring smell, or “I don’t really like that smell.” It could be so many different things to so many different people.
And likewise, there’s some really interesting things that happen when smell and sight collide. What I find really fascinating about the Mike Kelley piece is that you have the visual, potentially evoking, this sort of nostalgia, this fondness for the past, and then the scent, which is actually deodorizing or erasing that past.
I think smell really helps us engage with the world around us. It’s really bringing us into the moment, making us pay attention. Fundamentally, I would just really love that people realize how smell alters their experience of life.