Led by historians, perfumers and artificial intelligence specialists, the European Odeuropa project was launched at the beginning of 2021 with the aim of creating an olfactory encyclopaedia. Smells found in Europe between the 16th and 20th centuries will be recreated for the occasion.

Putting the sense of smell to work in European cultural heritage

All of our senses are involved in a cultural experience. If we go to a concert, the opera or listen to the radio, our hearing is involved. In museums, our sight is needed to admire the paintings, sculptures or traces of ancient civilizations. Touch is useful when we engage in a cultural practice such as painting or reading. Taste also plays an important role in gastronomy. Many of the above activities also use several of these senses.

The sense that is often left out is the sense of smell. Although museums are slowly discovering the power of multi-sensory displays, there is a lack of scientific standards, tools and data to identify, consolidate and promote the vast role of scents and odours in cultural heritage. Over a period of three years, the Odeuropa project will identify events, practices, emotions, vocabularies and spaces related to scents.

The main objective of Odeuropa is simple: to show that smells and fragrances are important and viable ways of highlighting Europe’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

An algorithmically designed database

Odeuropa was launched as a transnational and multidisciplinary project highlighting Europe’s olfactory heritage. Within the framework of the Horizon 2020 project, 2.8 million euros have been made available to carry out this mission. Several researchers from several EU member states will work together to develop a database listing the scents and odours existing in Europe between the beginning of the 16th century and the first part of the 20th century.

Artificial intelligence will be used in this programme, as an AI-based system will scan thousands of historical documents – texts or images – that refer in some way to a smell.

In addition, this algorithm will have the difficult task of identifying whether a person is smelling a scent. Once this analysis phase is completed, several research projects will begin on the geographical, cultural and temporal specificities of these odors. Those with a real historical content will be selected for Odeuropa. In 2024, European museums will be able to benefit from this sensory heritage and offer it to the general public.

Translated from Projet Odeuropa : une encyclopédie du patrimoine olfactif européen en utilisant l’intelligence artificielle