I’m an air taster studying the sensory analysis of atmospheric phenomena.

The Air Reports are conducted from my balcony in the West End of Vancouver Canada, on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, and from locations abroad.

Each report is a brief sensory analysis of the visual, haptic and olfactory qualities of the air as I experience them in the moment. Constituting a kind of research-as-performance, these reports are tweeted in real time at twitter.com/airtasting and then archived on this website.

Air Tasting research and project creation is supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Contents↩︎

• Read the Air Reports
• About Air Tasting
• Air Tasting workshops
• More projects & info about Air Tasting
• What is “tasting”?

About Air Tasting↩︎↑

Air Tasting is a practice exploring the experience of the air, initiated during a collaboration between myself and Janine MacLeod in 2002. It takes the form of written sensory analysis, instructional workshops, guided walking tours, distillation of aromatic materials, and the staging of atmospheric effects. By presenting the atmospheric experience as a form of participatory embodied knowledge this work seeks to bring to people a direct awareness of the air as our shared habitat.

While meteorology directs one’s attention away from the senses into abstract measurements and sweeping predictions about future conditions at a generalized geographic location, the Air Tasting method focuses on a subjective perception of the air in a specific place at a particular moment. Taking inspiration from Goethe’s claim that the human being oneself, to the extent that one makes sound use of one’s senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist, this project seeks to bring to people a direct awareness of the air as our shared habitat.

The atmosphere is a commons that connects us. According to astronomer Harlow Shapely the atoms you are now exhaling will spread across the country within a week, and within one year they will have traveled around the entire earth. In this sense our intimate bodily engagement with the air bridges all terrestrial distance. The air we breathe is arguably our most direct and essential connection to the world, a planetary material that is critical to our survival yet rarely the object of our immediate sensory awareness. I’m proposing that in this time of global climate crisis a deeper awareness of our daily engagement with the air is more important than ever.

Illustrating Shapley’s analysis of the atmosphere as a globally interconnection corporeal body, Cloud performance (shown above) creates a vapour cloud in order to make visible the interaction between air, weather, and landscape.

Air Tasting workshops↩︎↑

Air Tasting provides an opportunity to explore how we use our senses, starting from the very basic activity of simply observing one’s sensation of the air.

Since 2008 I’ve been leading site-specific air tasting walking tours and workshops where I introduce people to the tasting method and we explore the aromas and atmospheric phenomena of particular places. This exercise of directed haptic and olfactory perception employs a combination of observation, writing and discussion to engage people in an embodied participatory knowing of the air as a speculative object.

More about Air Tasting

For more info about Air Tasting and related projects visit alexgrunenfelder.airtasting.com/air-tasting-about.php