Taste Visualisation by Taste Viz (personal social media accounts handle)

Taste is a complex 4 dimensional experience. Different parts of the tongue, mouth and nasal cavity detect different aspects of flavour, scent and texture independently, yet together form a complete experience. Conventional written or verbal descriptions of flavour inevitably fall far short of capturing such a complex, nuanced and dynamic experience. This visualisation seeks to communicate the tasting experience more completely as different flavours, scents and notes appear and fade at different times across the palate, each with their own unique intensity and longevity. This particular example portrays a Champagne tasting.

Beyond a simple animation, I have created a fully automated process of producing unique flavour visual animations using Excel, VBA, Python and Blender software. A user can enter a range of parameters into an Excel Spreadsheet to define the notes, timing and intensities (as well as a range of other visual details such as tongue or label colours) they want portrayed in their animation, then a VBA server picks up the completed Excel template, opens the Blender animation template, the python code then collects the user defined animation parameters and automatically generates the animation without any manual processing.

I hope this approach to communicating flavour may serve as a tool for education or facilitation of discussions around flavour and the taste experience. I also feel there may be extensions of the concept to other types of sensory experience. It has been a joy and an incredible learning experience producing it.