Abstract

Keywords: sensory terroir, crossmodal art, sound art, wine, sensory anthropology, multisensory aesthetics, sensescapes, soundscapes

“Terroir, I think, is the notion that attempts to capture, in a sense, to bottle, this interaction between nature and culture for those involved in wine“. _Amy Trubek
“There is nothing in the senses which does not lead to culture“. _Michel Serres

Risonanze di Vino was a creative research project conducted with winegrowers in Campania, Southern Italy that sought to explore resonances between the senses, nature and culture. The non-visual senses were used as the main instruments of inquiry, to unearth the sentient interactions that often lie just beneath the surface of consciousness; in the intuitive ways the winegrowers worked with their changing environments, and through the crossmodal correspondences harnessed in the final multisensory artworks.
This paper situates Risonanze di Vino within the framework of the artist’s concept of sensory terroir, an interlaced sensuousaesthetic system, which in this project blends sensory anthropology, wine studies and crossmodal psychology into a multisensory arts practice. It documents the creation of the artworks, which used the winegrowers’ senses to orient field recordings made in their vineyards and wineries that were shaped into soundscapes that worked in harmony or conversation with their wines. These crossmodal sensescapes were designed to both transmit the winegrowers’ sensory experience, and forge further sensory connections through harnessing crossmodal correspondences discovered between the wines and sounds.

• Jo Burzynska, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney, Australia. Jo has a two-decade practice in sonic art that spans experimental music performance and recording, to public andgallery installations and sound art curation. Also a widely published wine writer, her work in both areas has increasingly converged in the production of multisensory works that combine the sound and chemical senses. This crossmodal art practice often in dialogue with contemporary psychological research into crossmodal correspondences; the systematic association of sensory features from different sensory modalities. She established the world’s first “oenosthetic” wine and sound bar at The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery in New Zealand and has just finished a PhD investigating sensory and aesthetic interactions between sound and wine.