As I enter the doors of the Michigan Theater the smell of pop corns strikes me. While I`m still thinking about those pop corns, I find a seat in one of the front rows. It is always better to be here early because in 10 minutes the theater will be full.

The Penny Stamps Speakers Series invites artists and designers to lecture on their art. It is promoted by University of Michigan School of Art & Design and it takes place on Thursdays at 5:10 at the Michigan Theater.

The world wide known odor artist Sissel Tolaas spoke on Oct. 20.

Tolaas, a smart and beautiful blond Norwegian woman, who has graduate degrees in chemistry, art, language and an undergraduate degree in math, started working with smells in 1990.
“I was tired of looking at things and make decision by using only one sense of all these amazing senses we have,” she said.
“ I started to challenge the nose to see if I would one day be able to use my nose as much as I use my eyes and ears to get information,”  Tolaas said enthusiastically.

When Tolaas first started, she didn’t have all the equipment she has now, “I used to have boxes in my laboratory where I collected the smells,” she said, “All the boxes had a tag with a possible name for the smell, when and where I collected it, what the smell represented.” Now she has a complex tool,  which collects the smell molecules, scans them, gives her an overview of the molecular and memorizes it. Then Tolaas uses her knowledge of chemistry to look for similar molecules and “the process of simulation,”, as she calls it, starts.

“As others compose music, I compose smells with smell molecules,” she said.
That`s what her job is about: creating in her lab the same smells she captures in real life.
She uses the chemicals she creates to teach.

“My larger aim is remedying the lack of understanding smell has in our society.
You breathe about 27,000 times each day and despite this, you have only two words to communicate about smells: bad or good,” Tolaas said. “That`s why I do a lot of workshops at kindergardens and primary schools, because working with adults is very complicated because of the prejudices. The earlier the better,” she said.

Tolaas does not approach adult audiences in a typical way. Her exhibits, hosted by the most notable museums of modern art in the world, are not structured the same way as her galley neighbours.

In 2006, her exhibit “The FEAR of Smell – The Smell of FEAR” , was showcased at MIT and it is her most well-know work.

“I selected 21 men and gave them a small device to collect their smell in the moment of fear. Then I collected the sweat, reproduced it with chemistry and exposed it on a wall at MIT using a new technology with which, by touching the wall you can smell the sweat. It`s a sort of new version of the scratch and sniff that you may find in magazines,” Tolaas said.

Tolaas believes that smells are important in every field of life. “I worked also with a real estate in Berlin. They asked me before throwing down a building to record the smells of each of the rooms and then, once the building was built again, to perfume the rooms with the smell they had before. This is an example of how smell can preserve architecture,” Tolaas said.

The “professional provocateur,” as people called her after she went to an elegant party dressed up but wearing one of the “sweat of a guy” perfumes, also works a lot with fashion companies such as Louis Vuitton, Maison Martin Magiela, Adidas, Raf Simons and Hendi Slimane.

“For one of my projects I collected coats from people of the city of Mont Pellier with the purpose of showing that smell molecules are everywhere,” she said.

“There was this woman that wore “Chanel n.5” for all her life, and when she read the analysis she found out that her coat smelled only 12 % of Chanel and the rest was dog feces, soy sauce, gasoline, aftershave, codfish, tobacco and in the end the 30 % of sweat. She was so disappointed that stopped wearing that perfume and left the coat to me! Now I have a collection of haute couture coats!” Tolaas said, smiling.

“I want people to see the world, their life from a new perspective, the perspective of the nose,” Tolaas said.

Her aim is eradicate all the prejudices, she wants to help people to open their minds and start considering the world from more than one point of view.“There’s so much bad and good, too many rules, and who made this rules? It’s time to change. We’re in a global thinking world and tolerance is a big issue.” Tolaas said.

“The only way to do that is by educating,” she said. Her way of teaching is different. It is full of irony and laughter, just like the presentation itself.

As I’m walking out of the Michigan Theater doors this time, many smells strike me.

There’s popcorn, rain, sweat and perfumes: I remember what Tolaas said some minutes early, “Sometimes it is just too much, I have to close my nose!”.