Pattern Recognition: A Background for Carsten Höller’s Smelling Dots (Portrait of Cedric Price), 2016

Abstract

For this issue of Future Anterior, curators Stefanie Hessler and Rebecca Uchill invited artist Carsten Höller to produce an olfactory insert based on his work with pheromone-infused media. Smelling Dots takes form as a “portrait of Cedric Price” by way of reference to Höller’s 2014 scented arboreal homage to the architect for the Venice Biennale exhibition: “Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price—A stroll through a fun palace.” This artistic olfactory commemoration points to the unfixed nature of smell memory—understood through neural pattern analysis differentiating odor from background information, contingent upon experience—a fitting tribute to Price’s continuously evolving Fun Palace.