This New Art Exhibit Allows You To Taste The Paintings

Primarily, we experience art visually. The occasional modern art exhibit will allow us to hear and touch various installations, but what if we could experience art with all five of our senses, including taste?This is the question posed by Tate Britain, an art museum in London, which will be premiering a new exhibit called Tate Sensorium, opening in the fall of this year. It will allow you to see, hear, touch, smell, and even taste the exhibits.

The exact nature of the exhibits is being kept under wraps, but if you're picturing people licking still life paintings, and coming away with the taste of apples and bananas, we (unfortunately) doubt that that would be the case. Instead, according to Quartz, the museum will be using new interactive technology to gauge how our reactions to art shift when our various senses are activated.

"It's all slightly experimental, but that's also why the scientists are really interested in being involved, because we'll actually be doing a lot of measurements around how people react to everything," Tom Pursey, from Flying Object, the creative agency behind the exhibit, told Quartz. "And from an artistic point of view... if we can complement your visual experience with these other four senses in a meaningful way, then maybe we can change how you feel about the art."

The exhibit works in tandem with new studies that suggest that none of our senses work in isolation. Restaurants are also taking note of this research: Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, for example, serves one of its dishes with an iPod to enhance the experience.