Mitchell Heinrich: Tagging With Scents

During Mitchell Heinrich’s artist residency in Vienna, he developed a new kind of “smell graffiti”. Using essential oils and refillable atomizing spray cans, Heinrich introduces incongruous smells such as dirt and grass into urban spaces. With the aim of uplifting and embellishing repellent spaces, he believes scent can be a powerful artistic force (and a lot less permanent – it disappears in 20 minutes to an hour).

Heinrich explains:

Scent is interpreted by the limbic system which is very closely tied to emotion and memory. This leads me to believe that interacting with people using scent can potentially be a much more powerful medium than paint since people experiencing it can’t help but react to it. The goal of this project is to realize the potential of smell as art and to explore different ways of using it to interact with people.

[via Urban Prankster]