The Sensory Terroir of Crossmodal Art

The Sensory Terroir of Crossmodal Art explores how our senses converge in making and experiencing art. It introduces crossmodal art as a new category of creative practice blending multiple senses. Drawing on the interconnectivity of wine terroir, the book provides a non-hierarchical framework for navigating multisensory aesthetic experience, from immersive art to wine tasting.

This innovative, interdisciplinary volume bridges the fertile experiential and theoretical fields of art and creative practice with contemporary scientific understandings of crossmodality in psychology, neuroscience, and sensory science. It focuses on crossmodal art created at the nexus of hearing with taste and smell - senses often excluded from definitions of art. Case studies reveal correspondences between sounds - from music to field recordings - and the culturally rich yet aesthetically contested sensory experience of wine. From these, the book develops practical and adaptable tools, which include sensory mapping systems and contemplative techniques that readers can use to both conceptualise multisensory experience and create crossmodally.

The Sensory Terroir of Crossmodal Art is relevant to scholars of sensory studies, art and aesthetics, sound studies and musicology, design, museology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as wine, food, and marketing researchers. It will also be of interest to artists and musicians, curators, experience designers, brand strategists, and drinks and hospitality professionals who wish to employ evidence-based, non-visual multisensory methods.