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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