The multimedia artist Adnan Aga, who was born without a sense of smell, built an experimental prosthetic device in the shape of a wall-mounted nose which uses Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence to predict the smell of any object presented to it. This device, which the artist called "Adnose", does serve not only as Adnan's nose, but as the nose of all members of the anosmic community who constantly wonder what the things around them smell like. The artist hopes that his project will draw attention to the often-neglected sense of smell and to the challenges faced by those who can't smell.
Adnose and its creator will be at Olfactory Art Keller for WTSD for a Smell-and-Tell event. Visitors are encouraged to bring their favorite, or most interesting, or smelliest object to the gallery to challenge Adnose to create a description of its smell. In addition, there will be some of the most interesting works of olfactory art from previous exhibitions at the gallery on display and for sale with a percentage of the proceeds donated to the World Taste & Smell Association.
“Our Smell-and-Tell event attempts to create empathy around smell-related disabilities by reprogramming our everyday sensory experiences while engaging and educating the public about the potential and diversity of scent as an artistic medium.”
ABOUT OUR HOSTS
Olfactory Art Keller is New York's only art gallery that focuses on artists working with scents. The gallery seeks to encourage visual artists to experiment with scents and perfumers to create scents as objects of aesthetic experience. Our exhibitions aim to engage and educate the public about the potential and diversity of scent as an artistic medium. By presenting scented objects, olfactory experiences and smell performances, we hope to normalize the use of scents in contemporary art. Our ultimate goal is to preserve olfactory aesthetic experiences in our visuocentric digital world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Adnan Aga is a Dubai-born multimedia artist based in New York City. Aga’s work in the field of creative technology and experiential design includes a variety of dynamic and unique projects from building giant gumball machines to musical soap dispensers to password protected cookie jars. His professional and artistic practices focus on designing and developing interactive experiences that explore the whimsical and downright comical areas of our lives. He merges cultural touchpoints and technology to create installations, wearables, software programs, and digital products that subvert our expectations of the role of sensory performance and information in daily life.
Currently, Aga is developing a series around the physical experience of anosmia, the absence of the ability to smell, in an attempt to create empathy around smell-related disabilities/sensitivities by reprogramming our everyday sensory experiences. Adnan has a B.S in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and will complete his M.P.S at the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at NYU Tisch in May 2023.