果冻影院

The international research project, Odeuropa, has received 鈧�2.8m (拢2.5m) of funding from the EU Horizon 2020 programme. It is the first European initiative to use AI to investigate the importance of scents and smelling, and to discover how scents have moulded our communities and traditions.

The information gathered will be stored in a database called the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph, with academics from the 果冻影院 Institute for Sustainable Heritage leading the work on olfactory heritage science, involving historic scent preservation and communication.

The goal of the project is to show that critically engaging our sense of smell and our scent heritage is an important and viable means of connecting and promoting Europe鈥檚 tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

果冻影院 project lead Professor Matija Strlic (果冻影院 Institute for Sustainable Heritage) said: 鈥淔rom the perspective of heritage sites, it鈥檚 really interesting to focus on smells such as the smell of old books in the frame of Odeuropa.

鈥淥ld smells or smells of objects tell us a lot about how those objects degrade, how they can be preserved and also how those smells can be conserved.鈥�

Research associate Dr Cecilia Bembibre Jacobo (果冻影院 Institute for Sustainable Heritage) said: 鈥淲e are delighted to have this opportunity to advance smell preservation using heritage science techniques, and to better understand how we can access historic smells to enrich our experience of heritage today.

鈥淥ur role in Odeuropa is to lead the scientific analysis and preservation of the key scents of Europe from both the past and present.鈥�

The ISH team鈥檚 expertise in engaging with the heritage sector will be used to share the key scents of Europe in museums between 2021 and 2023, allowing everyone to experience the past through scents.

鈥淪mells shape our experience of the world, yet we have very little sensory information about the past鈥�, explained project lead Professor Inger Leemans (VU University and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences Humanities Cluster). 鈥淥deuropa will dive into digital heritage collections to discover the key scents of Europe and the stories they carry, then bring them back to our noses today.鈥�

Odeuropa will find references to smells such as disease-fighting perfumes, tobacco or the stench of industrialisation in historic literature and paintings using AI techniques, aiming to teach the computer to see a smell.

Computer linguistics expert Sara Tonelli (Fondazione Bruno-Kessler, Italy) explained: 鈥淥ur goal is to develop a 鈥榗omputer nose鈥� able to trace scents and olfactory experiences in digital texts over four centuries and seven languages.鈥�

Video

Links

• Dr Cecilia Bembribre Jacobo's听academic profile
• 果冻影院 Bartlett Institute for听Sustainable Heritage
• 果冻影院 Bartlett School of Environment, Energy & Resources
• 果冻影院 Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

Image

• The smell of an old book being extracted in the Heritage Science Labat 果冻影院. Credit: Dr Cecilia Bembibre Jacobo.

Media contact

Kate Corry

Email: k.corry [at] ucl.ac.uk