The goal of the Odeuropa project is to show that critically engaging our sense of smell and our scent heritage is an important and a viable means for connecting and promoting Europe’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
Much more so than any other sense, our sense of smell is linked directly to our emotions and our memories. To aid museums in discovering the power of multi-sensory presentations, Odeuropa has developed scientific standards, tools, and data to effectively identify, consolidate, and promote the wide-ranging role scents and smelling have in our cultural heritage. European cultural heritage institutions have invested heavily in large-scale digitisation: we now hold a wealth of object, text and image data which can now be analysed using sophisticated computer science techniques. Odeuropa has applied state-of-the-art AI techniques to cultural heritage text and image datasets spanning four centuries of European history, to identify and trace how ‘smell’ was expressed in different languages, with what places it was associated, what kinds of events and practices it characterised, and to what emotions it was linked. This multi-modal information was stored in the ‘European Olfactory Knowledge Graph’ (EOKG), and then drawn on to create new ‘storylines’ informed by cultural history research. Using this smell history information, Odeuropa has co-developed scent-enriched user experiences and evaluated audience reception to these, combined with a practical guide for GLAMs on how to and bring scents safely into their institutions. Lastly, we have investigated and described best practices for olfactory scent preservation and worked with policy makers to include these in policy recommendations.
The Objectives of the project were:
1: Develop methods for identifying and tracing olfactory references in large-scale, digital image and text collections, across multiple European regions and changing languages from the 17th to the 20th century;
2: Create digital and multi-sensory resources to allow different stakeholders and audiences further their understanding of cultural heritage;
3: Define and promote measurable standards and best practises for preserving and analysing olfactory heritage;
4: Educate and train cultural heritage professionals in the use of olfactory heritage strategies.
5: Develop policy recommendations for cultural heritage brokers, NGOs, and decision makers to help preserve and safeguard our past and future olfactory heritage.
The conculsion of the action is that AI techniques can be used to extract and store smell references can be extracted from texts and images which offers a powerfull means for GLAMs to enhance their impact. The impact measurement efforts of the project have proved the multiple values olfactory storytelling can bring for GLAMs. Finally, the Odeuropa project has helped to put ‘olfactory heritage’ on the agenda of (cultural) heritage policy bodies. Although this just a first step, our research has mapped out a promissing strategy for the near future.
