After having contracted Covid-19 in 2020, Anne-Héloïse has been having neurological complications due to the virus severely damaging her olfactory neurons and nerves. She now has a neurological disorder called Parosmia/Cacosmia distorting her sense of smell and taste to some revolting and upsetting olfactory experiences. She now perceives her smell and taste as mould, faeces, petroleum, rotten flesh, epoxy resin and vomit. Months ago, her condition was not widely known yet by the medical community as it was a rare condition up until the pandemic. Feeling misunderstood by her doctors, family and friends, she used Digital Art to express and capture her parosmic experiences through visuals merging digital painting, collaging and programming coding. 

Her parosmic visuals are available as NFTs at https://opensea.io/accounts/AnneHeloise

Anne-Héloïse Dautel is a French-born, London-based Architect working at Bompas & Parr Studio , New Media and Visual Artist. After practicing as an Architect for 7 years, she joined the Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett, University College of London. Within the IA Lab, her research focused around robotics and the role of wonder within aesthetic, perceptual and interactive experiences, tied to both physical and digital environments. Her investigation explored how visual perception shapes our interpretation of surroundings through the multiple paradigms of emotional states. Influenced by Oscar Fischinger’s optical poems, her artwork expresses perception under the conditions of a shifting technological culture. She produces creative coding, computer-mediated graphics and architectural installations aiming to allow room for wonder and accommodate analogue phenomena while maintaining its relevancy in our digital era.