"Mother palate (palette)" - Tasting Cultural Identities

I wish to propose my academic agenda as a burgeoning undergraduate student of culinary cultural studies. In establishing the multifaceted applications of sensory studies of food and eating as it is a prevalent area of research across all disciplines of the Arts and Sciences, I hope to contract attention to the insight individual sensory food perception has beyond its current applications of gastronomy and commercialized flavor development. I will be presenting my concept of a “mother palate”, that the rudimentary flavors, textures, and sensory food experiences in the early life of an individual construct all future gustatory encounters, similar to a “mother tongue”. This “mother palate” is ultimately individual and unique; however, similarities and perceptional commonalities are found within cultures and specific cuisines. By analyzing and comparing the cross-cultural mother pallets, insight into disciplines across the arts and sciences is unlimited. Food and eating are integral to the nature, behavior, and history of humanity. A cross-disciplinary and multifaced application of research to food and eating and its intersectional domains of cultural, sociological, psychological, economic, political, medical, and gastronomic/culinary studies is imperative to a comprehensive understanding of these fields. This intellect will elucidate the future and decode the history of humanity. I hope to decode issues of identity and explore the nature of culture by sensing distinct cultural culinary pallets.
Keywords: Cuisine, Culture, Mother-Palate, Identity, Cross-diciplinary

Stephanie Grey ∆ & Christine Gallagher ∆ (Stir Copenhagen, Somerville, USA)

Stir Copenhagen: Multisensory Engagement for Enhanced Participation and Design Outcomes

Multisensory design plays a crucial role in shaping experiences and fostering deeper engagement, of products, communication and the built environment. Drawing from a sensory-based design tour in Copenhagen, and design educator expertise, this study examines how designers, artists and architects can apply multisensory strategies to influence user/audience perception and interaction.
Integrating multisensory strategies into design thinking and design process not only enhances the experience for user’s and participants, but also aligns with sustainable design principles by encouraging deeper interaction with materials, reducing over-reliance on visual stimuli, and fostering a long-term impact on both participants and designers.
By creating this opportunity for designers, educators, and makers, we hope to open new channels of experience, observation, and to disrupt usual routines. We offer a framework for incorporating sensory-driven methodologies into creative practices, broadening the scope of design beyond the visual to create more immersive and meaningful experiences.
Keywords: Multisensory Design, Design Methodology, Sustainability, Danish Design, Sensory Engagement

Sheryl N. Hamilton ∆ (Communication and Media Studies & Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Canada)
Audio-visualizing the Smell of Clean: Televising Olfaction in Spray Disinfectant Commercials in the USA's long-1960s

Household disinfectant spray in aerosol format entered the U.S. market between 1959-1963. Interestingly, this coincided with the widespread adoption of television in American homes, the ‘settling’ of television’s commercial broadcast model, and the rise of the suburb as a particular vision of the home, a vision fundamentally linked to hygienic ideals of personal and domestic cleanliness (Smith 2007; Hoy 1995; Henthorn 2006). Not surprisingly, television – an already “purifying medium” (Spigel 1997: 215) – was a highly desirable site for advertising this new product.

Household disinfectant spray made two interlinked claims targeted at the suburban housewife: it cleansed the air of dangerous germs and eliminated offensive odours. In other words, disinfectant sprays reduced contamination – microbial and sensorial.
But, how to advertise a product which: a) ‘disappeared’ before one’s very eyes seconds after use; b) killed microbes too small to be seen with the human eye; and c) eliminated odours, also invisible to the naked eye, all in an audio-visual medium?

My longer chapter explores the challenging work of televising the invisible and the olfactory in hygienic communication. Here, I focus on the olfactory, examining a set of American television commercials for household disinfectant sprays in the long 1960s. I identify and analyze the range of visual and auditory communicative techniques they employ in their take up of the ‘new’ medium’s technological and cultural affordances. From music and sound, to animation, to camera angles and shot length, to early “special effects,” viewers are enrolled into a multisensorial awareness of olfaction in the service of hygiene. Through an audio-visual medium, viewers are taught the smell of clean.

Keywords: olfaction, hygiene, television, audio-visual, commercial