Now we are really talking multi-media--text, graphics, animation, sounds,
music in stereo, and now smells.
kelly
The Village Voice
Published March 22 - 28, 2000
SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY
BY RICHARD THIEME
Smells Are Ready for Their Online DebutBut Is the World Ready for
Them?
[INLINE] igital scents will make plenty of dollars if DigiScents has
its way.
Sitting right at your desk, youll soon be able to smell the rosesor
baking bagels or honey-roasted nuts or crowded subway platformsusing
DigiScents new iSmell, "a personal scent synthesizer." Now in beta
testing, iSmell is a peripheral device you plug into a computer the
same way you plug in speakers and printers. If you visited a Web site
offering a whiff of fresh chocolate cake, for example, iSmell could
pull down the code it needs to mix chemicals in just the right way and
then release the designer aroma while you work on the Net. Or you
could invent your own scents and add them to e-mails or a short story.
DigiScents' wafting digital scents may make every media experience
immersive and wraparound, more real than reality. Scents work for
perfume advertising in magazines, says DigiScents president Dexster
Smith, and they'll certainly work when software re-creates them. "What
we're about is allowing people to have control or mastery and a
heightened awareness of smell," Smith says. "It's a very powerful part
of us, and it has been in the hands of a very select few. This is a
revolution of the senses, and we are bringing smell to the everyday
person via digital control. It's another example of the opportunities
for democratization through technology."
The mere suggestion of digital smell sounds crazy. But every good idea
doesat first. Like adding video to music and making MTV. Like
downloading Bombay footage from satellites and making a New York
newscast. Former Motorola CEO Robert Galvin once observed that each
breakthrough idea during his tenure began its life as a minority
opinion. At first, the new ideas couldn't even get heard. Then they
were ridiculed, and the people who birthed them were attacked.
Finally, everyone agreed they'd believed in the ideas all along.
Perhaps interlacing scents will become as much a part of the digital
realm as pictures, music, and robo-voices.
DigiScents isn't the only company working to digitize smells, though
it may have the best plan for convincing consumers that shelling out a
still unnamed number of bucks for aromas is a smart idea. Two years
ago, Adobe released its Net sniffer, Odorshop, and received little
fanfare. RealAroma's Web site (realaroma.com) hypes a smell box that
uses something called "Real Aroma Text Markup Language" and can run on
a modem as slow as 14.4K. Macintosh CEO Steve Jobs has announced he
wants future generations of his company's machines to be able to
handle odors, just as they're now equipped to play CDs.
What separates DigiScents from the pack is its commitment to putting
smells on the Net. The company has joined forces with RealNetworks,
whose RealPlayer turned online tunes from a vague concept to a near
essential for savvy surfers. Taking a cue from media portals,
DigiScents promises to launch a world of odors at Snortal.com.
Finally, you'll have something to whiff out there.
Mainstream consumers may not share Smith's enthusiasm for digitized
smells. Just as store owners use the right blend of soft rock to make
shoppers reach for their wallets, advertisers will use scents to
promote products from cognac to perfume to leather jackets. "Bringing
scent to everything may not be everyone's cup of tea," says Dr. Graham
A. Bell, director of the Centre for ChemoSensory Research at the
University of New South Wales, Australia. "People are wary of the
unsolicited intrusion of odors, pleasant and unpleasant, in their
lives. The shopping mall of the future may draw in customers by
proclaiming, 'No manipulative odors are permitted on these premises!'
"
But for people who love technology, adding smell to the array of
sensory riches is a natural.
Game developers may be first to make use of scents. Imagine inching
your way through a cold basement as the smell of mold seeps through
the damp brick, or rounding the corner of the track as tires squeal
and the burning rubber stinks. Like the pulsing music in Jaws that
made us anticipate the shark, scents will serve as clues or cause fear
and foreboding in haunted houses.
Sex sites won't be far behind. Using digital scents, we'll make our
own perfumes, candles, and lotions. We can even e-mail our own musk.
Imagine being lost in digital sex with a chat-partner or wandering an
online adult channel when pheromones flare your nostrils and make your
heart race.
Scent detonates the power of suggestion, unlocks buried memories, and
stampedes lust. Smells fire primordial urges to run, fight, or make
love. Smith envisions the day when a standard greeting card blossoms
with the scent of roses, or when aromatherapy threaded through
meditative music and archetypal images transports a viewer into an
altered state.
Some question whether that dream is suited for mass consumption.
"There are difficult hurdles ahead with regard to digitizing smells
and replaying them in the comfort of your home," says Bell. "The
replay device must produce smells faithfully. Technically, this is
very difficult, as most odors we encounter in everyday life are
composed of hundreds of components."
Scent is subtle, after all. The olfactory system can distinguish
thousands of odors that travel from receptors in the nose to the
brain. The new iSmell will come with 128 primary scents that can be
combined in recipes for the aroma of everything from fruit to mildew.
When the chemicals run low, just put in a fresh cartridge the same way
you'd replace a cartridge of printer's ink.
Smith thinks digital smell can become a part of routine life. Why
should we have only beeps and written messages when our computers boot
up or turn off? Why not add scents? People "can associate, say, coffee
with a start-up smell," Smith says, "and the ocean or a fireplace when
they shut down."
Digital scents will have uses outside the domain of commerce.
Bell has been developing a "chemical camera" that could sniff out
harmful chemicals or the presence of disease in a patient. He says the
goal is to detect "loose molecules" that may not have a smell.
And then there's the creation of multisensory immersive environments
for their own sake. Smith calls the art of using smell "scentography,"
and expects aroma to be used even as a scent track to add emotional
resonance to films. Since smell is so closely linked to memory, he
argues, aromas mixed with sound and images will create virtual worlds
complete with memories as real as, well, memories.
But first we'll have to be taught to distinguish odors as elements of
a work of art, the way we learned to distinguish "sound art" from
music. Industrial noise once sounded like nothing, literally nothing.
Over time, we learned to listen to ambient noise as elements of sound
sculpture, changing what had been perceived as merely context into
primary content. Scent may one day speak to us that clearly.
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