A sensory experience for Zurich Insurance Group exploring life without scent, where touch, sight, and sound compensate to fuel the imagination.

During COVID-19, thousands of people experienced anosmia, the sudden loss of smell. To re-activate what seemed lost forever, "The Lost Sense" experience was created for Zurich Insurance Group. Hosted at Berlin's Julia Stoschek Foundation in collaboration with PRESENCE gmbh, this immersive exhibition explored whether touch, sight, and sound could compensate for this loss and fuel the imagination. The entire multi-sensory experience was anchored in the real-life testimonials of five individuals living without scent.

Visitors navigated a curated journey through isolated rooms, each designed to trigger specific memories through a single sense. In the visual space, abstract video installations by Domestic Data Streamers evoked phantom scent sensations through vague, memory-triggering imagery. This flowed into a deeply immersive sonic environment featuring a custom speaker design created in collaboration with Berlin sound studio Mosche. Finally, the tactile space housed five distinct physical fixtures, each offering a unique sensation to touch that mirrored the texture of specific memories.

At the end of the exhibition, the five individual stories were revealed, allowing visitors to connect the isolated sensory moments they had just experienced with the deeply personal narratives of the anosmia sufferers. As a final takeaway, guests interacted with a custom perfume machine by Algorithmic Perfumery. After completing a highly personal questionnaire, the machine produced three bespoke scents in front of them in real-time, giving each visitor a personalized physical perfume to take home as a lasting reminder of the power of scent.