Where can this kind of association be found?
Like for music, asoociations between images and odors are not frequent. However, it has been shown that olfactory memory can be triggered by internal visual images and sommeliers seem to use inner mind maps of wines to assess and recognize them (Gaiser, 2012). Experiences have been carried out to elicit those maps during wine tasting sessions. The mental images are however fairly close to literal representations of the aromas that are present in the wines (coffee, barell to represent a flavor of wood…).
How to associate odors and images with mathematical techniques?
When numerical information on odors or flavors is available – like assessments by experts of wines or beers on different criteria – distances between the flavors can be calculated and therefore with an appropriate mapping device flavors can be linked with images.
33 photos representing variants of the well-known wire chair – designed in 1951 by Ray & Charles Eames – and 20 Begian regional beers are used to illustrate the method. The photos were taken in an exhibition in Paris (in December 2015) for which well-known designers had been asked to propose their interpretation of the wire chair. The exhibition and the subsequent sale were organized by the philanthropic association “La Source”. The 33 variants are given below.
A subset of those wire chairs is associated to the 20 Belgian regional beers in the figure above.
More sophisticated techniques can be used to associate more than one single photo to each beer. In the example given below, a bunch of pictures of llowers has been linked to each beer; the flowers represent different properties of the beer (sweetness, bitterness, length in the mouth, alcohol level …) on different criteria.
