Sensory Symphony Symposium

Reflections on time, synesthesia, accessibility, and agency from our multisensory panel

On November 2nd, I moderated a panel, the Sensory Symphony Symposium, where artists Muriel Louveau (vocal artist), Emily Pope (movement and dance), and myself (scent artist and researcher) continued our collaboration in a dialogue on how scent, sound, and movement shape embodied experience.

We gathered a group of panelists, including
Dr. Andreas Keller: gallerist and owner of Olfactory Art Keller, a gallery which was for five years in New York featuring scent art in all forms. Andreas has an academic and scientific background in olfaction.
Miriam Songster: a multimedia artist often incorporating scent into objects, spaces and performances.
Dr. M. Leona Godin: a blind author and artist currently working on translating sensory information (i.e. photograph to word)

I am writing to share the recorded symposium, but I also wanted to speak to some of the interesting topics and questions that arose.

---

Recorded Symposium

---

For context, here are all of the questions posed to the room:

I. For the Artists of Sensory Symphony
Prompt 1:
For those who couldn’t attend the open rehearsal, could you recap the experience from your perspective? What were you exploring in that shared space and what surprised you as the work unfolded live?
Prompt 2:
When working in tandem across senses that don’t share a single language, what helps you recognize or translate meaning? Is it rhythm, emotion, intuition, memory, or something else that emerges between you?

II. Time and the Body
To all:
Time behaves differently across modalities. Scent lingers, sound decays, movement loops and dissolves. How do you each experience or compose with time in your own medium? And how do these temporalities intersect when you work together?
Follow-up:
Can time itself become a bridge for cross-sensory communication? Is there a rhythm that allows these languages to meet?

III. Synaesthesia and Translation
To Dr. Andreas Keller:
Andreas, you’ve seen sensory experimentation from both the lab and the gallery. In your experience, how has synaesthesia, or attempts to evoke it, been explored most effectively? What approaches seem to foster genuine cross-sensory understanding, and where have projects fallen short?
Follow-up:
Do you think translation across senses is truly possible, or is it the gap, the impossibility of perfect translation, that generates the most compelling work?

IV. Accessibility, Embodiment, and the Senses
To Miriam Songster and Dr. M. Leona Godin:
Both of you engage sensory accessibility and embodiment in your practices. When we merge senses (voice, scent, and motion) how can this layering create new access points for experience? And where might it risk creating new barriers?”
Follow-up:
What responsibilities or possibilities emerge when we make work that doesn’t privilege sight? How might multisensory practice reframe who art is for and how it’s encountered?

V. Closing Group Question
When we move between senses that don’t share a common language, what allows meaning to form?Is language something that creates meaning between us, or does meaning arise first, through shared perception, gesture, and resonance? How do each of you locate meaning in cross-sensory experience, and what might that teach us about how humans communicate beyond words?

---

Recapping the Artists’ Experience: Sensory Symphony in Action

We opened with reflections on Sensory Symphony, an open rehearsal performed earlier this year at the 106th Performance Space. Emily’s movement, Muriel’s vocalizations, and my diffused scents intertwined in real-time improvisation. No script, just response.

Emily called it a raw, present-state exploration, where layers of self surface only in spontaneity. Muriel described entering a different consciousness. What bound us was shared intuition: emotion, memory, and rhythm became our translation tools. Muriel noted that voice carries its own “scent” for her. High pitches evoked airy perfumes, low timbres something earthier.

Time as a Sensory Bridge

Each medium handles time differently: scent lingers, sound decays, movement loops or dissolves. Andreas and Miriam observed that temporal mismatches in multisensory works can alienate or intrigue. In performance, a scent might anchor a moment long after a gesture fades, creating emotional after-images that shift how we experience duration together.

Synesthesia: Translation or Creative Gap?

Andreas framed multisensory works as “scaffolding” for scent-shy audiences: pairing it with sound or movement offers entry, then gently withdraws. True resonance, he argued, lives in the gap. Perfect translation is impossible, and that friction is the art. Forced equivalences (arbitrary scent-sound pairings) collapse; emotional grounding sustains.

Muriel cited a French synesthete who links voices to perfumes. One evoked Chanel. Miriam shared a mirror-neuron moment from the performance: Emily’s plank pose triggered a visceral echo in her own body. We connected this to empathy as embodied simulation, per aesthetic research.

Accessibility and Embodiment: Reframing Who Art Is For

Leona and Miriam challenged sight-centric defaults. Multisensory layering opens doors. Scent, voice, motion invite diverse entry, but risks overload if unconsidered. Leona advocated opportunity over mandate: flexible design, not universal access. Miriam stressed warnings, self-identification, and respect for sensory variance.

Audience questions on evaluation sparked ideas: define success via mission (awareness? discourse?), invite community writing, counter perfume commodification with critical conversation.

Ruminations: Agency and Accessibility

Agency in Scent Art Scent enters the body uninvited. It is intimate, tied to breath and memory. Andreas noted gallery visitors often needed explicit permission to engage. Without it, they might never choose to smell. With permission, personal histories activate; meaning becomes co-created. Agency demands ethical framing: opt-in mechanics, allergy awareness, trauma sensitivity.

Accessibility Through Opportunity Design for variance, not universality. Modular experiences, scent-optional zones, verbal cues. Leona’s “opportunities” approach. Miriam: embodiment differs wildly; what opens for one may close for another. Multisensory art asks: Who is this for? The answer: everyone, on their terms.

More Sensory Conversations

The symposium didn’t resolve everything, but it affirmed that cross-sensory work thrives in the spaces between: gaps in translation, rhythms in time, resonances in bodies.

If you’re inspired, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you experienced synesthetic moments? How do you navigate accessibility in your creative life?

Muriel, Emily, and I are brainstorming what’s next for Sensory Symphony, so stay tuned. In the meantime, thanks to all panelists and attendees for this enriching exchange.

Until next time,
M Dougherty

---