NOW OPEN: ICPR 2022 ODeuropa Competition on Olfactory Object Recognition (ODOR)

Painting: Jan Steen: The way you hear it, is the way you sing it, Painting c. 1665, Mauritshuis

We are proud to announce the launch of the ICPR 2022 ODeuropa Competition on Olfactory Object Recognition (ODOR), the world’s first competition for the detection of olfactory objects in historical artworks.

Olfaction is a crucial element of human experience, but has not gained a lot of attention in cultural heritage. The ICPR-ODeuropa Olfactory Recognition (ODOR) challenge has been created in the context of the EU-funded Odeuropa Project, which aims to remedy this shortcoming by promoting, preserving, and recreating the olfactory heritage of Europe.

Through this challenge, we want to promote the development of object detection algorithms that work under realistic conditions, such as varying image quality and modalities, long-tailed category distributions, or fine-grained detection classes. Being able to detect olfactory objects (e.g. tobacco pipes, perfumed gloves) might in turn lead to the ability to recognize more complex, implicit smell references such as smell gestures or olfactory iconography. The challenge thus promotes a multi-sensory perspective in computer vision and digital humanities.

Interested in competing and putting your computers up to the sniff-test? Find out everything you need to know to register here!

Workshop: Malodours as Cultural Heritage?

Caption: Strawberries by Klaus Pichler- Sort: Strawberries ‘Elsanta’ / Place of production: San Giovanni Lupatoto, Verona, Italy / Cultivation method: Foil greenhouse / Time of harvest: June – October / Transporting distance: 741 km / Means of transportation: Truck Carbon footprint (total) per kg: 0,35 kg / Water requirement (total) per kg: 348 l / Price: 7,96 € / kg; photo courtesy of Klaus Pichler.

Odeuropa and the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies invite you to join us on the 15th & 16th of December for an online workshop on malodours as cultural heritage.

Sensorial perception is as much a cultural phenomenon as a physical and biological function. Fragrances, aromas, and the mouth-watering smells of foods are defining elements of our social  perception, building memories, and situating us into particular cultural contexts.  But, what about the unpleasant or foul odours? Heritage and museum initiatives tend to shy away from malodours,  focusing on pleasant fragrances from the past, warping ideas about olfactory history. In this Odeuropa Workshop: Malodours as Cultural Heritage?, an interdisciplinary group of scholars and museum professionals will explore and challenge the topic of stench, dealing with the specifics of historicising malodours. The border between the malodorous and the pleasant is not only individually, but also collectively, culturally and historically defined. What do malodours tell us about transitions and advancements within urban, social, cultural, and environmental contexts? How can the sense of smell act as a measurement of analysis for histories of the past and present? How can we locate malodours, intangible by definition, within the cultural heritage sector and how can they be used as a storytelling technique?

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