Odorama audience smelling the social sculpture 'World Sensorium' by Gayil Nalls

Nalls’ major social olfactory sculpture, World Sensorium, is the result of over a decade of research into neuroaesthetics, botany, the anthropology of olfaction (or smell), and the “aesthetics of mass anatomy.” This statistically based composition of phyotogenic materials is an on-going work of vast scale and extreme complexity, created to evoke a global memory. Its formula, based on population percentages, reflects her investigation and defining of the “aesthetics of mass anatomy.”

Nalls broadened the definition of sculpture and public art when World Sensorium premiered at New York’s Times Square 2000 celebration, released from above onto the crowd of two million participants as the New Year arrived. The influential work creatively taps world memory as a natural resource to provide a universal experience.