Smell Talk Dance

Scenographic Studies of the artistisc research project SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS by artist duo MUELLER-DIVJAK
Multisensory presentation and discussion. With Smell Talk Dance we invite you to an evening of collective sensing, dialogue and celebration.

We are all living systems: sensing beings, embedded in and connected to other living systems.
This foundation is at the core of SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS. The arts-based research project, which is located at AIL, explores how sensory experiences – especially through smell, touch, and sound – can foster deeper awareness of our interconnected world.
During the fifth installation of a series of scenographic studies, more than one thousand persons in Vienna, Porto, Bangkok, Trang, Songkhla and MIT Boston took part in a public scent-based vote in response to the question ‘Imagine a being that knows and feels everything about connectedness and interactions. How would it smell like?’ Now, it’s time to present the results.

The event starts with the last opportunity to discover all the different SYS-smells and a panel talk with the project team, including the SYS perspective. This is followed by the opening of Part VI of the series of scenographic studies: SYS DANCE, featuring SYS-related tracks and a smellscape based on the favorite smell chosen by the participants over the past weeks.

The open format invites the audience to sense, to ask questions, share thoughts, and engage in the project, the multisensory installation, and the themes raising. The emerging presence of SYS, the imagined being of embodied systems awareness, is welcomed and expected.

The evening concludes with a SYS DANCE floor, that invite us to move and connect beyond words.
Let’s gather to sense, talk, smell, and dance - together as living systems.

The artist and researcher duo MUELLER-DIVJAK (Dr. Jeanette Müller and Dr. Paul Divjak), who conceived and initiated SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS, is working at the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab / University of Applied Arts (project leader: Mag. Alexandra Graupner) with international artists and systems scientists to form experiential spaces by artistic means (scenographies) and to create sensory impressions that help us to better understand and resonate with living systems.