Smell and Technology

Welcome to the future! Step inside the darkened theater, settle back in your Premium Aroma Seat, and get ready for a trip through the exotic land of China that smells just like the real thing! Soar over an ancient evergreen grove; revel in the gentle pine-scented breeze. Trudge through the stifling Gobi desert; inhale the hot dust and prickly cacti. Tiptoe into a small grass hut, and sniff the cool dirt floor and handmade incense. It would seem that in our high-tech world of gidgets and gadgets, such an experience would be happening everywhere. And we are making steps toward virtual reality experiences that are increasingly more like “the real thing”. When it comes to olfaction, however, we are far from creating anything anywhere near an authentic experience. An actual observer of this travel film would have a rather different encounter. First, he would walk into a theatre that reeked of the remnants of more than thirty different odors, clinging to the seats and curtains. The pine grove would smell rather like the just-cleaned restroom in Union Station; the Gobi desert, due to a time lag, would smell like fresh cut grass, and the tea and dirt smells mix together into an odd not-quite-dirt-not-quite-tea conglomeration that’s a bit nauseating. While technology can catapult us into one almost real situation after another, and provide stimulation for multiple senses, olfactory technology is continually disappointing, and even recent improvements cannot really create a virtual world that smells like the real one. And yet, they keep trying. The entertainment industry, commercial marketing, medicine and physical therapy, and psychology all have one failed experiment after another in olfactory technology. In some areas, we seem to be on the verge of a real breakthrough, like Cyrano Industries’ electronic nose, which can detect far before the human nose that food has gone bad (Herz). In others, though, we are far from advanced, such as Digiscents brilliant Ismell device, which was touted to effectively synthesize more than a hundred different scents. The company folded in 2003 while the Ismell was still in development. Technology has been working toward creating multisensory environments since its beginnings. Writers of utopian fiction explored devices such as Aldous Huxley’s “feelies” experience, which wrapped its audience in an orgasmic assault of smells, sounds, and sensations. In the 1950’s audiences were exposed to devices such as the Sens-o-Matic, a machine that enabled the participant to smell, touch, taste, see and hear a film. Today, computers and odors are partnered through technologies that can produce smells to alter the environments we live in, and to create more realistic surroundings in virtual reality and film (Herz 224). Even though, as Jim Drobnick states, “the promises of olfactory media have tended to hyperbolize its capabilities”, attempts are made again and again to include smell in order to “humanize and de-alienate the circumscribed sensescape of audiovisual technology” (Drobnick 330). Repeatedly, though, experiments in olfactory technology have either failed completely or been met with such skepticism and hostility that they are viewed as gimmicks. Why is it that audiences are able to suspend disbelief with their eyes and ears, but not their noses? Is the problem with the technology, or perception, or culture? I think that obstacles lay in all these areas, and that olfactory technology may never reach the point where it is accepted in the same way that visual and auditory technology is.


The earliest known example of olfactory technology is in 1906, when S.L. Rothafel, owner of a movie theater in Forest City, PA dipped cotton in rose scent and held it in front of an electric fan, thereby suffusing the theatre with floral essence during a newsreel screening of the Pasadena Rose Bowl game (Drobnick 359). While there were several more similar attempts at olfactory technology in the years that followed, the real breakthrough came around 1960, when two cinematic technologies arrived – Smell-O-Vision and Aromarama. Both of these used a scent track on the film itself to trigger odors, sort of like a soundtrack. They faced a few challenges, however – the first of which was synchronization. Odors take time to be recognized, especially in large areas, so it was hard to time the odor release with specific events in the film. Secondly, since the change from one scent to another was a slow process, one scent would often linger before another could be released, creating “odorific confusion” (Drobnick 360). Aromarama attempted to alleviate this by distributing scents through the air conditioning and using Freon gas to help dispense the smells, but this didn’t really work, and audiences were left with an unpleasant mixture of smells (Drobnick 360). Neither of these technologies was met with positive criticism – in fact, a New York Times reviewer called it a “novel stimulation” and “bunk”. His review began: “If there is anything of lasting value to be learned…it is that motion pictures and synthetic smells do not mix (Crowther, qtd. in Drobnick 360). Smell-O-Vision was also listed in Time Magazine’s (2000) reader-polled “Top 100 worst ideas of all time” (Drobnick 360). These negative reactions didn’t cause the entertainment industry to be defeated, though. They actually seemed to take a step backwards in subsequent decades, and several films have used what is known as “scent card” technology, which is essentially a scratch ‘n’ sniff imitation. Viewers would see a film and be prompted by color blocks or images to scratch their cards with the corresponding color or image, thereby releasing by microencapsulation smells that relate to the visual images on the screen. The most well known attempt was John Waters “Odorama” film, Polyester, in 1981. The film told the story of a housewife who learns that her pornographer husband is unfaithful, her daughter gets pregnant, and her son is suspected of being a notorious foot-fetishist who has been breaking the feet of local women. At the beginning of the film, viewers were given a scratch ‘n’ sniff card with the numbers 1 to 10 on it. When the number came up on the film, they were to scratch to reveal odors such as flowers, grass, pizza, glue, and feces. In 1988, the technology was used by the English National Opera in a scratch ‘n’ sniff production of Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges. Later, two Nickelodeon-produced movies for children were released with similar techniques, The Wild Thornberrys (1999) and Rugrats Go Wild (2003) (Drobnick 371). While this form of technology certainly works, it relies on a much older concept, and involves a completely separate process to release odors, one that is completely controlled by the viewer.
Outside of the entertainment industry, olfactory technology has had a little more success. Electronic noses, or e-noses, have been in existence for about ten years. These electronic noses typically consist of a series of sensors, each with previously specified sensitivity to certain chemical compounds (Herz 209). The Cyranose 320, for example, has been used to analyze surrounding air from fresh beef strip loins stored at 4 degrees and 10 degrees Celsius, and was found to be accurate between 90 and 100 percent of the time when compared with actual microbial counts (Herz 210). E-noses, according to Rachel Herz, are cheaper and more accurate than human panels, can reduce the amount of analytical chemistry needed, are easy to use, can give immediate results, and are portable. There are some problems with e-noses, however. First of all, most e-noses are only able to recognize pre-programmed sets of related compounds. If one wanted to analyze vapors that were made up of many different chemicals, a whole array of e-noses with different sets of sensor panels would have to be set up. Another difficulty is that terms for smell perception are imprecise, such as, “this smells fruity”, and e-noses are unable to replicate that subjectivity. Finally, most compounds are far too complex chemically for an e-nose to take in all possibilities – smell molecules often have such subtle differences that a slightly different ratio will completely change the scent, and this would be unrecognizable to an e-nose. Coffee, tea, and cocoa all contain the same 670 compounds, but the human nose can tell quite easily that they smell different, whereas an e-nose would simply detect the identical compounds (Lai).
Another area where smell technology has been successful is in military training. The military has been experimenting with olfactory technology to recreate the smells of a battlefield – burning bodies, exploding bombs, blood and sewage are being combined with VR simulations to enhance the quality of training for soldiers, and, according to Herz, produce “a generation of better soldiers (249).” Of course, such technology is still in early stages of development, and very expensive to produce. Also, much information regarding these technologies is classified and it cannot be closely analyzed.
One company that appears to be making progress is TriSenx. TriSenx has marketed the Scent Dome, which retails for $369.00 (“Digital Scent Technology”). The company, based in Savannah, Georgia, has created a device that can hold up to twenty scents at a time. The scents, in the form of oils, can be mixed and matched by signals given from the computer. The codes can be embedded in music, CDs, E-mails, games, and Web Pages. The domes mix and release the smells into the air using technology similar to the iSmell. TriSenx claims that with their catalog of over 200 scents, almost any scent can be recreated. Users can take virtual holidays, where they smell the sea and suntan lotion; smell the horses as they watch a race on-line; take a virtual trip to a jazz club, complete with the scents of whiskey and cigars, or conduct a safety training session where the smells of burning wires dominate the senses (“Digital Scent Technology”). TriSenx has even partnered with a website called “Scenttv” (www.scenttv.tv), which provides educational and entertaining videos that contains the codes to trigger the Scent Dome. For a mere $17.95 a month, one can join Scenttv and get a free Scent Dome with refills for the life of the membership. Sadly, the entertainment on Scenttv, such as “Mulletman's” vocabulary presentation and cute little girl’s “Gingerbread Man Song”, leave much to be desired. Instead of providing quality experiences enhanced by scent, Scenttv seems to throw together some scent-related information to accompany the Scent Dome technology.
What are the real problem areas with olfactory technology? Is it that the development is still primitive? Is it that we just don’t understand well enough how olfaction works? Do we have a psychological block against our olfactory bulbs being manipulated, or are the technologies available just not convincing enough? I think that these issues are all components of the ultimate failure of olfactory technology. The three most prominent areas of difficulty, though, are related to technology development, the speed of the chemical processes of olfaction, and cultural attitudes.
Rachel Herz feels that the innovative technologies are hindered by an “incomplete understanding of how the sense of smell actually works, and several “inherent incompatibilities between the nature of vision and smell” (234). Our understanding of olfaction is still in its earliest stages, and thus our efforts to simulate scents synthetically are hindered by the fact that there are still arguments about how scents are received, translated and processed. We also tend to approach all sensory understanding from a visual perspective, and this retards the process of understanding olfactory signals. Think for example, about how vision works. One can mix red and yellow to make a new color, orange, but this doesn’t work with scents. Rachel Herz cites the following example: “You can’t mix a chemical that smells like grass with one that smells like coffee and get a new scent, “graffee”, with its own unique olfactory sensation. It may just smell like grassy coffee” (234). Also, much of the new technology in olfaction is accompanied by visual stimuli that appear to be devices out of science fiction – elaborate headpieces, whirring fans, and colorful domes require set-up and adjustment, and serve as reminders that our senses are being manipulated. Some resistance exists simply because new scent technologies appear to be “innovation for innovation’s sake”, according to Jim Drobnick (360). Another factor involved in technology development is scent and control. This is evident in the fact that film technology regressed from scent being pumped through the air conditioning systems to scratch card technology. Scratch cards are voluntary and do not impose upon the user, but “ambient smell is more intrusive and persistent” (Drobnick 364). Smells invade personal space and leak into the environment, and we have not yet developed a way to turn on one smell and turn off another (Drobnick 364).
Olfaction is also a very slow sense, unlike vision. It takes at least four hundred milliseconds (almost half a second) after an odor has been presented for a smell to be detected (Herz 235). It only takes your brain 45 milliseconds to register sight. This makes it very challenging to couple visual stimuli with scents as they operate at completely different speeds. It also takes time to move from one odor into the next. Scents combine and mingle, so that sometimes more than one scent is present simultaneously. Drobnick compares this to a slow symphony: “an ambient piece that slowly resolves one scent into another, or that can simultaneously produce multiple distance smells like chords in music” (362).
It also takes a long time to turn olfaction off. Herz explains that “airflow, temperature, humidity, volume, and a host of other factors determine how long a scent will persist in your nasal panorama”, not to mention mixing problems (236). One viewer of the film The New World in Japan, which was accompanied by a scent soundtrack in 2004, commented that it was like “watching a movie while an aromatherapy clinic was being held in the lobby. Even in my Premium Aroma Seat, I had a hard time distinguishing the scents and often was unsure if a new perfume were being introduced or if a random atmospheric shift had brought a residual scent into stronger focus” (236). Olfactory molecules are also chemically sticky – they stick, literally, to paint, cloth, and plastics. Also, most aromas used in scenting devices are oil based, which in itself is sticky. Thus, scents in a theater will tend to cling to the walls and seats, lingering long after the scent device has been turned off.
Scent is unpredictable as well. We aren’t even sure yet if olfactory molecules differ because of their shape, as some theorists believe, or their vibrations, as newer research tends to indicate (Turin). This obviously makes it challenging to create and adjust synthetic scents, and much of it is trial and error. In either case, the relationship between fragrance molecules and fragrance perception is not dependable (Herz 235). Some chemicals have completely different molecular structures, but they smell identical, and others have similar structures, but smell completely different. For example, Herz says that simply “reversing the molecular spin, as in the right and left-hand isomers of the molecule carvone, yields one that smells like spearmint and another that smells like caraway” (236).
Finally, there is the obstacle of adaptation. Sometimes, when a smell lingers in the environment, we adapt to it and can no longer smell it. This is why those in particularly smelly jobs are able to persist – they adapt to the ambient scents and no longer can detect them. This may not be a problem in the film industry, but VR games and experiences, where audiences may be subjected to the same scents over and over, may have to deal with this problem. If the same odors are released each time a game is played, the scent component will become irrelevant. This is also a difficulty with military training, according to Herz: “Too many mock missions with the same set of smells will result in diminished ability to get the real feel of the enemy” (237).
The most critical problem to olfactory technology, however, and one that I think will be the most difficult to overcome, is cultural. Jim Drobnick feels that the strong negative reactions from critics regarding the use of smell in computer technology are “illustrative of the undervalued role of smell in Western society’s sensory episteme” (359). Many people assume that “multimedia” automatically means “mulitsensory”, but this is not the case. Also, assumptions have been tainted by novelty in the past, with the advent of companies such as Aromarama, Smell-O-vision, and Odorama. Drobnick explains: “Read in an unironic and unsympathetic way, these cinematic smell media are seen as, at best, mere gimmick, and at worst, a technological cul-de-sac which sets back the serious adoption of smell in the digital domain” (Drobnick 364). Drobnick also feels that the sense of smell and its history has been long disregarded, and this is “compounded by the failed experiments and mixture of earnest belief and self-aware pastiche that such cinematic smell media encompass” (364).
Cultural attitudes are strongly associated with emotional reactions as well. Our responses to scents are most often learned (Herz), and differ based upon upbringing, personal experience, and group culture. What may invoke pleasant memories for one person might also release unwanted memories or trigger an unpleasant reaction in another. Researchers currently have no way of measuring or determining how individuals will react to certain smells, and cannot therefore use scent to recreate emotional images or dramatic scenes. Drobnick insists that there are “pejorative cultural attitudes” to combat as well, and that these are “against any kind of odiferous intrusion into entertainment activities or users’ home environments” (330). Smell is unreliable, ephemeral, and invasive, and many people simply are not willing to have their bodies and brains intruded upon in this manner.
So, what does this mean for olfaction? Is it destined to be forever banished to the worlds of utopian fiction or novelty? Can scent ever be taken seriously? At this point, history indicates that it can’t. Olfactory technology in particular seems to just perpetuate notions of scent being a gimmick and good only for children’s movies and futuristic entertainment. Should scent technology be put on hold until we are more aware of how scent works and how to effectively simulate it? I think not. Even though technology is not yet reliable, or even accessible, paying attention to scent is a worthwhile endeavor. Herz explains: “simple awareness of how amazing, wonderful, and incredible our sense of smell is, and how much pleasure, dimensionality, intensity, and meaning it can bring to our lives, is the most essential olfactory knowledge that we need to enrich our lives now and in the future. Paying attention to smells really does enhance our ability to smell, and if we don’t pay attention, many aromas will slip by unappreciated” (238). Drobnick also feel that scent is worthy of exploration, especially in the art world: “the qualities of scent which deny its aesthetic viability within traditional aesthetics – evocativeness, intimacy, variability, primality, evanescence and so on – often turn out to be the very qualities most attractive to artists seeking to redefine aesthetic experience” (328).
Scent has been ignored, even repressed for so long that it’s only logical that our understanding of it is primitive. Developers of scent technology have to combat lack of knowledge about how scent works, primitive technologic devices, inconsistent and undependable chemistry, and pervasive anti-olfactory cultural attitudes. Even if they continue to be unsuccessful, focusing on scent in technology can increase our awareness of olfaction, thereby causing us to think about it more and actually enhancing our natural sense of smell. We also will come closer to understanding how it works as more and more advancements are made. Most important to scent technology, though, is its use in understanding art and culture, and this is where I see the most potential for development. Installation pieces that explore cultural perceptions of olfaction, written pieces that critically analyze texts from an olfactory perspective, film and video that harnesses the sense of smell as an accompaniment, all have the power to force us to pay attention to smell and transform the way we “see” the world. While technology may currently be ineffective when it comes to olfaction, it can still harness our imaginations, and give us a new realm in which to pursue sensory perception – a world that has been relatively unexplored in the history of Western culture.


Works Cited

“Digital Scent Technology." Digital Scent Technology Blog. 30 Mar 2007. Digiscents. 16 April 2007 .
Drobnick, Jim, Ed. The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Herz, Rachel. The Scent of Desire. New York: William Morrow, 2007.
Lai, Scott. “Electronic Nose”. 25 Nov 2003. 12 Dec 2007. ecow.engr.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/get/bme/ 462/webster/papers2003/electronicnose-scottlai.doc

Read more!

Smell and Perception

“The act of smelling something, anything, is
remarkably like the act of thinking itself”
– Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

A man who suffered from anosmia, or loss of the sense of smell, once commented: “It was like being struck blind. Life lost a good deal of its savor – one doesn’t realize how much “savor” is smell. You smell people, you smell books, you smell the city, you smell the spring – maybe not consciously, but as a rich unconscious background to everything else” (qtd. in Drobnick 185). Why is scent such a vital part of perception? And why do so few people fail to realize it until it is absent? If scent gives life such “savor”, then why is it so underappreciated? A large part of the problem is that perception of scent is far more involved than most people care to admit. Our culture, our society, our conditioning, these all contribute to and transform our perception of smell, and these factors are so diverse and uncontrollable that the explanations are as ephemeral as the sense itself.




We are aware of the world through our sensory experiences. The term used to describe our awareness is perception, and it’s a highly complex concept. So expansive is the study of perception, in fact, that many theorists choose to break it up into more manageable slices – how we perceive sound, or color, or taste. Of course, perception is all wrapped up in philosophy as well. Zen Buddhists and atheists alike contemplate such perceptive mysteries as the sound of one hand clapping, or the reality of the forces we cannot see. Perception is part of biology, and culture, and sociology, and, well, pretty much everything else. Sadly, though, the study of smell and perception is rather limited. There are countless reasons for this, but the simplest answer is that smell is elusive, complicated, and just not really understood yet. Scientists have very recently figured out how smell works, at least on a biological level. The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to neuroscientists Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck for their research on scent, and Jim Drobnick says that their research is “on the verge of cracking” the basic code for scent perception and cognitive processing (2). We now know, for the most part, what goes into our noses and what our brains do with it to turn it into a smell. But smell perception is so much more complicated than that. What makes us like or dislike a smell? Genetics? Culture? The shape of the molecules? Are our perceptions of smell inherited, or instinctive, or learned? The research on our most primitive sense is still in a most primitive state.
Scent has often been, according to Drobnick, “delimited as a mere ‘biological’ sense”, but in reality, scent is “subtly involved in just about every aspect of culture, from the construction of personal identity and the defining of social status to the confirming of group affiliation and the transmission of tradition” (1). Perhaps this is why the perception of smells is such a difficult topic to discuss – one can’t really break it up into nice, neat slices – certainly, the scientific aspects alone are difficult to navigate. But scent cannot be examined simply from a biological perspective, because so much of olfaction is dependent upon cultural factors created by society and involving the environment, the people in it, and their symbolic worldviews. Drobnick explains: “no act of perception is a pure and unmediated event; each society inflects and cultivates sensory practices according to its needs and interests” (2). Drobnick suggests that taking a sociological approach to olfactory investigation will open up wonderful new methods of inquiry. Through “olfactocentrism”, he says, we can explore how scent transforms perception and thought.
To address olfaction from a cultural viewpoint, very little needs to be known about how smell works, but a basic explanation may be helpful. Rachel Herz, a psychologist who writes about smell in clear, straightforward terms, gives a fairly concise overview of the process of olfactory perception. Odors, she explains, are molecules that float through the air. When we breathe, air goes into the nostrils where these molecules land on the olfactory epithelia, a mucous membrane containing sensory neurons. The neurons are covered with cilia, and the cilia have receptors on their tips. Humans have about 20 million receptors in both nostrils (dogs have about 220 million), which is why we are considered rather poor smellers. So, here we are, with the odor molecule-filled air, being sensed by the 20 million receptors. The smell must then, of course, make a quick trip to the brain. The neurons connect directly to the brain by passing through a bony, holed structure called the cribiform plate. The axons of the neurons bundle together, forming the olfactory nerve, which sends impulses to the olfactory bulb. From the bulbs, the sensory information goes to the olfactory cortex, part of a brain area connected directly to the limbic system, where emotions are housed. Interestingly, Herz notes, the “connections between the olfactory area and the amygdala and hippocampus are more direct than the connections between these brain areas and any other sense” (“I Know What I Like” 191). Herz thinks that this is the key to why olfaction is so closely linked to both emotion and memory.
There are still a few puzzles associated with this process – for example, how the molecular makeup of an odorant gets translated into a psychological perception, and then, how we formulate a like or dislike response. According to Herz, most scientists follow what is known as the “shape theory,” which says that the molecules have different shapes and the shapes fit (or don’t fit) into the olfactory receptors. Once a correct amount of molecules fit into the receptor, the signal is sent. The pattern of electrical activity in the olfactory bulb then determines the scent we perceive (“I Know What I Like” 192). Luca Turin, though, proposes a rather different theory called the vibration theory. He says that the perception of scents is due to the different vibrational frequencies of the molecules, and molecules with similar vibrations produce similar scents. Herz says that Turin’s theory has been proved true for some scent categories, like citrus, but that the evidence still leans mostly in favor of shape theory (“I Know What I Like” 192).
Perception theories aside, however, a complete understanding of smell sensation requires much more than just a biological explanation. Herz thinks that we need “combined efforts by scientists in molecular biology, neurophysiology, and psychology” (“I Know What I Like” 192), but I think we also need ethnographers, anthropologists, and sociologists. Smell is cultural, and to really understand it, we need to study its cultural aspects.
We first must recognize how scent perception differs drastically from the traditional vision-based approach to perception. It’s logical that we tend to approach perception through visual means, because vision has long been touted as the most important sense, and it is the one we rely on most heavily. But examining the world around us while heightening the importance of smell can give great insight into perception, particularly in regards to emotion, culture, and social development. One essay called “Smellscape”, by J. Douglas Porteous, argues that “unlike the information present in vision, olfactory experiences are inherently discontinuous, fragmentary and episodic, that is, time-based” (Drobnick 86). Considering the immediacy of vision, a sense that is focused on time would provide a very different perception of the world. Instead of the focus being on perspective, scale, and distance, as they would be in a visual environment, a “smellscape” would concentrate on “intensity, complexity, and affect” (Drobnick 86). Porteous is quite confident that these olfactocentric “views” of the world “exceed ocularcentric approaches” (Drobnick 86).
Visual perception is grounded in thought and cognition, whereas olfaction is tied directly into the brain’s limbic system, which is the “seat of emotion” (Porteous 101). Porteous explains that vision distances us from the object, because we “frame views in pictures and camera lenses; the likelihood of an intellectual response is considerable” (101). Smells, by comparison, “penetrate the body and the immediate environment, and thus one’s response is much more likely to involve strong affect” (Porteous 91). Porteous’ explanation made sense to me as I compared the process of looking at a lovely banquet in a colorful magazine and actually experiencing a banquet laid out on a table. Our vision can appreciate the beauty of the food, the artistic layout, and the rich colors, the view framed in a picture, through a camera lens. But, putting the food before us, with the apple-pie cinnamon and roast turkey shaped molecules vibrating into our bodies, our response is much more intense, emotional, and surrounding. Alain Corbin quotes Saint-Lambert: “Odor gives us the most intimate sensations, a more immediate pleasure, more independent of the mind, than the sense of sight” (Corbin 177). Porteous agrees, explaining that smell is primarily an “emotional, arousing sense, unlike vision and sound, which tend to involve cognition” (Porteous 89). To Rachel Herz, though, this begs an important question: “Where does the sensory perception of a smell end and emotional appreciation of that smell begin?” (“I Know What I Like” 192). Herz feels that our emotional responses to smells are learned.
While Jim Drobnick recognizes that we have an instant positive or negative reaction to smells – a “polarized response”, he calls it, he also says that there is an “intense power of suggestion” when it comes to olfactory perception. Herz explains: “Our responses to odors are learned: our specific history with specific odors gives them meaning, making them pleasant or unpleasant to us” (“I Know What I Like” 194). She goes on to relate that odors have connotations that we learn by association. Every smell we experience is in a certain context: “semantic, social, emotional, physical”. The context always has some emotional content, positive or negative, and we associate the smell with the remembered emotion (“I Know What I Like” 194). There are many examples that illustrate this. Imagine the first time you smelled roses. Perhaps you were playing in a lovely English garden, or watching your father bring home a gift for your mother. What if, though, you first smelled roses at your mother’s funeral? Or if the mean old woman who babysat you wore a rose-scented perfume? Your association with the scent would be very different. Herz notes that the reason most of our odor preferences come from childhood is because that is when we first experienced them. She comments: “Anytime in life that we encounter a new smell, emotional-odor associative learning can take place to determine our hedonic responses to it” (Scent of Desire 38).
Perception is also affected by culture and situation. While some may say that there are certain smells that are universally disliked, Herz disagrees. She notes, for example, that in some cultures, the smell of feces represents ritual and tribal conquest, as members of a culture smear their faces and bodies with it. In other cultures, the smell of a burning body, something that Westerners “could never conceive of liking”, represents a typical cremation ceremony, and is a smell that is even accompanied with celebration – some cultures like it (Scent of Desire 44). Herz gave another interesting example that illustrates the difference in odor preferences in two English-speaking cultures, Britain and the United States. The smell of wintergreen mint, she says, is a favorite American scent, but is “highly disliked” in the United Kingdom (Scent of Desire 42). According to studies conducted in Britain in the mid 1960’s and the United States in the late 1970’s, history provides the answer. In Britain, the scent of wintergreen was used in medicines and rub-on analgesics that were popular during World War II. In the United States, the scent is almost exclusively used in candy and gum. The British associated the scent of wintergreen with medicine and war, the Americans with sweet, positive experiences (Scent of Desire 42). Herz has many more similar examples regarding how expectations and situational contexts change a scent from a pleasant to an unpleasant one, and vice versa. Mark Twain gives an example in The Invalid’s Story – a stowaway is convinced that the pungent aroma emanating from a sack is a dead body, when it is in fact strong-smelling cheese. Herz notes: “a suspicious context, and a burlap sack of a particular but ambiguous shape, created a set of expectations that influenced odor perception and even inspired drastic behavior” (Scent of Desire 55). A relatable example occurred recently in my own family. My aging grandfather had a favorite chair that, as he became increasingly unable to care for himself, developed a pungent odor. Once, leaning over the chair, several months after my grandfather passed away, my father was nauseated by the odor of the chair, and amazed that it would still be so fragrant after several months of disuse. As he sat up and commented on it, however, he noticed that my mother had opened a jar of peanut butter, and that what he thought was the chair was actually an odor he liked very much. Herz says that in her laboratory, they were able to change scent perceptions simply by changing labels. They would give the same odor a positive or negative name, such as “parmesan cheese” and “vomit”. People would act differently to the odor based upon its label, even saying that they were disgusted by it or wanted to leave the room. When they were told that they were smelling the same scent with both labels, they refused to believe it (Scent of Desire 57).
Another area where scent perception is altered is language, as Herz’ example illustrates. Herz explains that since scents are invisible and “we are obsessed with identifying the objects in our world, we look to words and scenes for help” (Scent of Desire 57). We also are limited in the words that we have available, and our like or dislike of a smell affects our descriptors. In asking subjects to describe a skunk, for instance, Herz heard everything from lemonade to sweaty socks to chocolate-garlic. She notes: “we don’t learn about odors the way we learn about other objects and experiences in our world. Our parents and teachers don’t give us any ‘smell and tell’ lessons; therefore most of us have acquired idiosyncratic connections between scents and words” (Scent of Desire 54). The book Sensorium, an exhibition catalog for a recent sensory exhibit at MIT offers another interesting perspective: “Smell bypasses conscious cognition to summon core emotional states associated with the minute chemical combinations that first stimulated the neuron for that specific scent” (Jones 13). The book later asks the important question: “Can this subversive quality account for its absence from language?” (Jones 14).
We are only just beginning to understand the complex ways olfaction is immersed in social contexts, cultures, and psychology. Recent decades have provided us with the basic codes we need to understand how smell works biologically and chemically. Recent studies are beginning to help us venture out from a perceptive world so long immersed in solely vision to, as Jim Drobnick calls it, an “olfactocentric” realm where our sense of smell is considered separately from the other senses. As we do this, we discover that the chemical and biological explanations for smell only begin to explain this elusive sense. Our perceptions of smell are learned, and our childhood, background, emotions, cultural situations, and language all impact this learning process. The implications for better understanding history, culture, and perception through the sense of smell are only just beginning to emerge from a culture that has been focused almost exclusively on vision for hundreds of years. Helen Keller once penned these words about smell: “A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experience…Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived” (Keller 181). It’s intriguing that a sense so powerful has been placed at the bottom of the sense hierarchy for so long, and thrilling that new discoveries are helping us to better understand the unseen world, the olfactocentric one.


Works Cited
Corbin, Alain. “The New Calculus of Olfactory Pleasure.” The Smell Culture Reader. Ed. Jim Drobnick. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Drobnick, Jim, Ed. The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Herz, Rachel. “I Know What I Like: Understanding Odor Preferences.” The Smell Culture Reader. Ed. Jim Drobnick. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Herz, Rachel. The Scent of Desire. New York: William Morrow, 2007.
Jones, Caroline, Ed. sensorium: embodied experience, technology, and contemporary art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.
Keller, Helen. “Sense and Sensibility.” The Smell Culture Reader. Ed. Jim Drobnick. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Porteous, J. Douglas. "Smellscape." The Smell Culture Reader. Ed. Jim Drobnick. Oxford: Berg, 2006.

Read more!

My new idea

I'm getting my idea down here so I can see it put into words - it always helps.

For my final project/presentation in this Independent Study on smell and culture, I'm going to make a movie sort of thing. I am going to get a group of drama kids and have them create costumes that roughly reflect Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, and the 17th/18th Centuries. They are going to have a list of scenes that they will stage in a tableaux vivant sort of manner, and I will photograph them (or preferably, they will photograph each other). I will then turn the scenes into a silent film of sorts, with captions explaining the history of smell in culture. I will doctor each of the scenes in Photoshop, using some sort of color to show the smells wafting. Eventually, when I get my SCENTDOME from the TRI-SENX people, who are being very resistant, I will try to incorporate actual scent into the presentation.

Read more!

Smell and Culture

So, I don't have time to post regularly. What a surprise! But I can at least post my work, so there will be some stuff up here. Perhaps over the semester break I'll be able to actually converse with myself a little. But, till then...

SMELL AND CULTURE

Ooooh, that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh, that smell – Lynyrd Skynyrd


Introduction: Smell is Everywhere
A small, blonde four-year old was riding around in the back of a 1972 yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Suddenly, a pungent, eye-watering odor filled the car. She wrinkled up her nose: “What’s that, Mommy?”
“That’s a skunk. I love that smell!” her mother replied. The little girl took a long, stinging sniff.
“Me, too!” she sighed happily, and drifted back into her imagination.
Why do I like skunk smell? Was it because my mother told me she liked it – was my odor preference shaped by the power of influence? Is it genetic – do my olfactory bulbs send a different signal to my brain than other people? Is it psychological, or emotional – my mom felt happy when she smelled a skunk – did I pick up on that? Or is it biological, something in my ancient caveman ancestors that preconditioned me to enjoy the smell of a skunk? These sorts of questions are what have prompted me to explore smell, and the more I read about it, the more I find that the unanswered questions are myriad – which, of course, prompts my curiosity even further.

Smell is powerful. Odors can affect us on physical, psychological, and social levels. They can trigger intense memories, and strong emotional responses. They are, according to Constance Classen, “essential cues in social bonding” (3). But, smell is the most undervalued sense in the Western world. Why? Some attribute it to the fact that the human sense of smell is “feeble and atrophied” in comparison with its importance among animals (Classen 2). Others feel that smell is too mysterious to really study effectively – smells cannot be named or recorded, captured or stored. We must make do with description and recollections when dealing with olfaction (Classen 3). Diane Ackerman, in her Natural History of the Senses, explains: “When we use words such as smoky, sulfurous, floral, fruity, sweet, we are describing smells in terms of other things. Smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names. Instead we tend to describe how they make us fell. Something smells ‘disgusting, intoxicating, sickening, pleasurable, delightful, pulse revving, hypnotic, or revolting” (7). A few sensory studies scholars attribute our cultural devaluation of smell to the hierarchy of the senses that took place during the 18th and 19th centuries, as philosophers equated reason and civilization with sight, and smell, the basest and most primitive sense, with savagery and filth (Classen 3). Some researchers even think that smell is considered “threatening to a social order”, and thereby perceived as dangerous for several reasons: it reveals inner truth; it reacts with interiors, rather than surfaces, as one does with sight; it cannot be contained, it can escape and cross boundaries – this, Classen explains, is “opposed to our linear worldview with emphasis on privacy, discrete divisions, and superficial interactions” (4). Accompanying Classen’s comment is the notion that smell is invasive – one can shut out the other senses, but smell pervades almost anyone who breathes, whether its wanted or not. Smell goes inside the body and into the brain – it stimulates reactions, memories, emotions, and one cannot help but let it. Some may resist learning about and understanding smell simply because it makes them uncomfortable. Rachel Herz notes a reason that some scientists ignore smell, explaining that some research psychologists and neuroscientists claim that the “physical properties of odors are hard to precisely control, and the responses to them are subjective; therefore, studying smell is ‘unscientific’” (23). Finally, smell has been viewed as frivolous and irrelevant for hundreds of years, likely because of a combination of the reasons above. Smell has not been taken seriously in scholarship, and has instead become the stuff of children’s books and scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers. This should not be the case. Classen, as part of a research project called “The Varieties of Sensory Experience” based at Concordia University, Montreal (1988 to 1991), notes: “The intimate, emotionally charged nature of the olfactory experience ensures that such value-coded odors are interiorized by the members of society in a deeply personal way. The study of the cultural history of smell is, therefore, an investigation into the essence of human culture” (3). This is what I wish to explore – what is significant culturally about smell? How has the past shaped the way Western culture devalues smell – when did this begin, and why? Why is smell, as Classen says, in the realm of “the Western scholarly and cultural unconscious”, and why does it need to become part of academic study? If we learn more about smell, how will our understanding of sensory perception and of culture in general change? These questions perhaps cannot be answered to my satisfaction because we are still so primitive in our understanding of how smell works, both biologically and psychologically. But smell is also cultural – and its historical and social significance can be examined and evaluated, perhaps providing insight into some of the mysteries of this elusive sense. So, with much help from Constance Classen, and her Cultural History of Smell, I’d like to venture on a brief tour of smell in the Western world – from the Ancient Greeks and Romans to modernity.
The Ancient Olfactory World
In Ancient Greece and Rome, scent was used for everything, everywhere. The streets and homes (and people) of the Ancient World teemed with odors, and their smells had impact on status, perception, health, class, and social values. The Greeks and Romans got their extensive use of perfumes from the East, primarily Egypt and Persia. While scents were essentially the same for men and women, the citizens would create “olfactory wardrobes” for themselves, wearing different scents on their hair, breast, legs, and feet (Classen 17). Their homes were perfumed – the walls and floors smattered with perfumed unguent, the wood in the fireplaces scented when it was cold outside; cushions were filled with herbs, creating a deeply fragrant, and sometimes cacophonous, odor symphony (Classen 18). Their perfumes were prepared in a variety of ways in order to have more uses – oils, dry powders, thick ointments, and incense, not just liquids. Interestingly, the literal meaning of the word “perfume” is “through smoke”.
The perfumes of the ancients were mostly derived from their gardens and both men and women created exotic blends for diversion. Classen gives a few examples, which include ingredients such as lilies, honey, cinnamon, saffron, myrrh, balsam, reed, behen nut, cassia, wild grape, lotus and marjoram (15). Just as today, perfumes came and went in popularity. Pliny writes: “The first thing proper to know about perfumes, is that their importance changes” (qtd. in Classen 15). For a time, an iris perfume from Corinth was all the rage, but then a vine-flower scent from Cyzicus became popular, and later, marjoram based scent from Cos (Classen 15).
Class distinctions often dictated the amount and intensity of perfume choices, and the ancient world is where some of the stereotypes regarding scent began. Rich people smelled good, poor people smelled bad. Odor classes developed, because the rich could afford perfumes, and the poor couldn’t. Tradesmen often were classified as ill scented, as they wore the perfumes of their trade – tanners and fishmongers were characterized as foul because of the scents associated with their work (Classen 34). Martial mentions the disgust felt around such people in his Epigrams: “Upon you all the neighborhood presses, upon you the bristly farmer with a kiss like a he-gat, on this side the weaver crowds you, on that the fuller, on this the cobbler who has just been kissing his hide” (qtd. in Classen 34).
The class distinctions also applied to city and country dwellers. One might think that the natural, fragrant countryside would have olfactory preference, but the ancients seem to judge smell based on the inhabitants rather than the surroundings. City dwellers felt that their “rustic counterparts” were “uncouth bumpkins stinking of goats and garlic” (Classen 34). In Clouds, Aristophanes defines himself and his wife by their olfactory identities, explaining that he was from the county, “reeking of the dregs of the wine-cup, of cheese and wool”, and his city-wife was “redolent with essences, saffron, voluptuous kisses, the love of spending” (qtd. in Classen 34).
Literal odors weren’t the only means of classification, however – many distinctions were made on a symbolic level (Classen 35). The wealthy were fragrant not just because of perfumes, but because of their high status in society; the poor because of their low status. For women, the most prominent classification was that desirable women were fragrant and undesirable women stank. Older women and prostitutes smelled rank, whereas courtesans and young brides were fragrant. Fragrant women could also be dangerous – as in the case of the seductress Cleopatra, or the mythological Circe, with her many perfumes and potions (Classen 37). To some extent, however, even though beautiful women could exude sweet-smelling fragrance, all women were viewed as foul smelling. Lucretius writes that even the most lovely women “reek of noisome smells” when alone (Classen 38). This, Classen feels, is because of the ancient association of women with the moon, (“th’ inconstant moon”, as Juliet would say) which was representative of corruption. Men, being connected with the sun, smelled great, as the sun was traditionally viewed as producing sweet-smelling scents (38). In literature, daily life, and societal assumptions, olfaction in the ancient world was used to pass value judgments. This, Classen notes, “would have been a potent aide to maintaining different classes in their ‘proper’ place in the social order” (38).
Another fascinating aspect of the ancient olfactory world is that philosophers speculated upon the mysterious nature of smell, introducing some of the ideas that still are associated with olfactory studies. Personal odor was of great concern to the philosophers, as exemplified in this quote from Aristotle’s Problemata: “Why has the armpit a more unpleasant odour than any other part of the body…and why is it that those who have a rank odour are more unpleasant when they anoint themselves with unguents?” (qtd. in Classen 30). Plato pondered the ephemeral nature of smell, writing that odours were “half-formed”, being thinner than water and rougher than air, making them difficult to name or classify (Classen 48). Plato also discussed the power of smell, alluding to its danger, in the Republic: “When the other appetites, buzzing about it, replete with incense and myrrh and chaplets and wine…awaken in the drone the sting of unsatisfied yearning, why then this protector of the soul had madness for his bodyguard and runs amuck” (qtd. in LeGuerer 144). Both Plato and Aristotle seemed to agree that odors should be enjoyed aesthetically, but not carnally. Aristotle comments: “We do not qualify those who derive pleasure from the odors of apples or roses as unbalanced, but we do describe as unbalanced those who relish the odors of unguent or culinary preparations, for unbalanced person derive pleasure from the fact that such odors remind them of the objects of their concupiscence” (qtd. in LeGuerur 145). Lucretius thought about the differences between pleasant and unpleasant odours, explaining that pleasant sensations were composed of smooth particles and foul smells and unpleasant situation of hooked particles (Classen 48). Interestingly, the notions of smell molecules having shapes is still one of the foremost theories in how we perceive smell, though the newer explanations now seems to relate to the vibrations of the molecules rather than the shapes (Turin). While the ancient writings about smells are limited, records show that the ancient world was acutely aware of odors on both literal and symbolic levels.
The Middle Ages to Modernity
It seems, perhaps, overambitious to lump olfaction in the 4th century with ideas of the 20th, and I questioned Classen’s decision to do so as I read her book – but they are connected so well, and the progression of early Christianity’s notions of smell feed almost directly into the way we view smell today. There also have been several hundred years of scent being virtually ignored, so there’s not a whole lot to say about the time period in the middle. It appears, though, that the devaluation, even the repression of smell began with the rise of Christianity.
Christians were told to avoid scent for several reasons: Incense was viewed as part of the “trappings of idolatry”, or “food for demons” (Classen 51). This is due in part to the fact that many Christians were executed for refusing to burn incense before the image of the emperor in order to show their loyalty. Perfumes were viewed as sensual, a “frivolous luxury tending to debauchery”, and even bathing was discouraged, as Christians had to guard against “pagan sensuality”. Christians were proud to smell of dirt and sweat, as these are the scents given to the human body by God (Classen 51).
One exception to this aversion to odor in Christianity was the “odor of sanctity” (Classen 53). Just as the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that that gods possessed a sweet odor and made their presence known through fragrance, Christians believed that a mystical fragrance signaled the presence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, an exceptionally holy person would have this scent. Priest were thought to have a sweet odor also because of Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 2:15: “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved” (qtd. in Classen 52). The odour of sanctity was especially noticed at the time of death, and many saints are said to have emitted sweet aromas when they died. Of course, the sweet smells of those holy ones was a stark contrast to the typical foul odours associated with death, showing how God had the power to place certain chosen ones outside of the natural decay of the body (Classen 53).
One of the prominent contributors to olfaction in the Middle Ages is that people believed the plague was transmitted by scent. Martin Luther thought that evil spirits poisoned the air, and those who inhaled the evil air fell victims to the plague. This was supported by the fact that victims of the plague had a particularly strong smell. This did, however, resurrect some of the ancient customs associated with scent, as people felt the need to rid themselves of this dangerous odor by drowning it out with other scents. People used aromatic woods, juniper, laurel, rosemary; they even used less pleasant, but appropriately pungent smells, such as vinegar and old shoes, or keeping goats in the house to eliminate the evil plague odors. Outside the home, people wore “olfactory prophylactics” when they went outside, made up of an orange stuck with cloves, or a bad of spices (Classen 60). In some cases, while unintentional, these did have medicinal value. While they couldn’t really stop the plague, some of their ingredients, such as lavender and garlic, were effective germicides. They used these methods not just to prevent disease, but to cure it, as Classen explains: “Contemporary medical theory held that the nose gave direct access to the brain. Medications inhaled through the nose, therefore, were reputed to act more directly on the brain, hence the spirit, than those swallowed. Furthermore, the spirit, or life force, was imagined to be similar in nature to odour, making smell the best means of correcting its disorders” (61).
As odors began to creep back into daily life because of the plague, perfumery began to rise again in popularity. 16th century home-dwellers are said to have used perfume in their homes by placing herbs on the floor, scenting water with roses, and perfuming bed linen. Perfume was also resurrected in food, and scented banquets were held wherein spice plates were passed among the guests. Perfumes were thought not just to mask unpleasant odors, but completely dispel them. Perfume also became a means of diversion – perfumed parties were held where guests were splashed with a variety of fragrances, fountains sprayed perfumed water, and cannons shot sweet-smelling water. For a while, there was a resurrection of scent comparable to that of the ancient world, but in the 17th century, this began to decline, as Puritans began to frown upon the excess, doing things like “denouncing spices as sensual stimulants” (Classen 71).
Classen says the 17th and 18th centuries brought an “olfactory revolution” (78). Bathing became good for the health, and this began again the serious divide between the classes, olfactorily speaking. The upper and middle classes began to cleanse their bodies, and the lower classes did not They became increasingly more aware of the differences in scent between the more idle members of society and the working classes. Overall, the use of perfume declined. As most people were now bathing, it was no longer necessary to use perfume to cover the smells of the body. Still, though, it appears that the poor smelled filthy, the middle classes were relatively neutral when it came to odor, and the rich could afford perfume, which was viewed as extravagant, since its odor was fleeting. (Classen 83).
The olfactory revolution was also characterized by a division between the sexes. Up until this time, men and women wore similar smells, but as perfumes and colognes became more refined, sweet and floral smells became feminine, and woodsy or musky scents were masculine. The perfume industry began to create perfumes specifically for women, and market others as aftershaves for colognes for men. The reasons for this divide are not completely clear, but since perfumes were typed as frivolous by many members of society, they were likely deemed appropriate for “frivolous creatures”, namely, women (Classen 83). A flower garden was a feminine place, and thus, the world outside the flower garden, the wild wood, was masculine. Men, however were really not supposed to use perfume at all, Classen says they were expected to “disdain olfactory artifice and smell only of clean male skin and tobacco” (84). She notes that this trend was part of a “general cultural insistence at the time that the sexes appear in all ways to be different” (84).
Classen only devotes a few paragraphs to what I feel is one of the most critical elements in the history of smell culture – that of the hierarchy of the senses, which developed during the Enlightenment. Science had debunked many of the myths associated with the power of scent – no longer did people believe in the odor of sanctity, they didn’t think that smell was therapeutic, nor did they believe that smell caused disease. As philosophers such as Kant and Condillac, along with notable figures like Pasteur, Darwin and Freud, de-emphasized smell, olfaction began to fade away. Pasteur discovered that diseases were caused by germs, not scents. Condillac, in his Treatise on the Sensations remarked that “smell seems to contribute the least to the operations of the human mind” (qtd. in Classen 89). Kant called smell the “dust heap of the senses”, while Darwin supported the idea that man had evolved beyond the sense of smell, separating him from the animals. Freud and Herder agreed, saying that sight had taken priority when men began walking upright. Freud even explained that “adults who continue to emphasize the olfactory are arrested in their psychological development” (Classen 90). Kant expressed what became the general feeling about olfaction during this time:
“To which organic sense do we owe the least and which seems to be the most dispensable? The sense of smell. It does not pay us to cultivate it or to refine it in order to gain enjoyment’ this sense can pick up more objects of aversion than of pleasure (especially in crowded places) and, besides, the pleasure coming from the sense of smell cannot be other than fleeting and transitory.” (Kant 46).
Because of science, the 17th and 18th centuries became a rather sterile environment in the realm of olfaction.
An important exception does need to be noted, however. As odors were ushered out of the mainstream by science, they were adopted by literature. Classen comments: “Certain writers, such as Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, set out to depict the olfactory landscapes of heir novels as graphically as the sanitary reformers detailed those of the streets and cities they wished to cleanse” (85). Although odor lost its power in the literal world, it kept its symbolic value, thereby making it an excellent tool for writers. The symbolist writers – including Baudelaire, Mallarme and Wilde, found that sense was a glorious way to explore themes of aestheticism and decadence. Using an ephemeral sense such as smell enabled them to create a dream-like atmosphere, and “the intrinsic formlessness of smell made it an apt literary metaphor for the formlessness of emotions” (Classen 86). Use of smell symbolically wasn’t the only reason for these writers, though – they also could use it to make a political statement. Mainstream society was repressing odor, as they were repressing sexuality and sensuality. Writers didn’t want to be “bound by the sterile social conventions” of bourgeoisie society, so they flaunted their rebellion by dwelling on the uncontrollable power of scent (Classen 87). Also noteworthy during this time is that smell first became deeply associated with memory, perhaps because “the growing deodorization of society was creating a nostalgia for lost scents” (Classen 87). Often, writers who wanted to create an atmosphere of bygone days would do so with olfactory description.
Aside from writers, however, the 19th century left us in an olfactory wasteland. The civilized, reasoning man had no truck with smell – it was a symbol of frivolity, femininity, and imagination. It could not be described, controlled, or catalogued, and was certainly of no interest to science. While commercially, olfaction continued to gain popularity, and the perfume industry has been booming since the late 1700’s, in culture and academia, scent has been virtually ignored for several hundred years.
Conclusions – Where do we go now?
The work of Constance Classen shows that one researcher has attempted to bring olfaction “out of scholarly and cultural unconscious into social and intellectual discourse” (10). Classen feels that what we need is “sensory equilibrium”, and only this can help us truly understand cultural history and how the senses work together. Sadly, Classen’s work in 1999 is one of only a very few examples of books on smell culture. While there is a growing interest in olfaction, especially in relation to commercialism and marketing, there are still only a few writers who show a significant interest in smell and culture. Many sensory scholars contribute segments of their writing to olfaction, but only as a small slice (and overall less important) of discussion of all five senses. This seems odd, considering that the sense of smell is our most primitive sense, that it is so closely aligned with emotion and memory, and that recently, great discoveries have been made about how smell works biologically and psychologically (Buck and Axel, Turin, Herz).
A review of smell in culture throughout history reveals that it was not always repressed as it is today. The ancient world lauded smell, and explored it as perfume, in their dinner parties, as cultural and social identity, and through philosophy. While somewhat limited by Christianity early on, the Middle Ages valued smell in religion and medicine, using perfume to ward off evil and dispel the plague. The 16th and 17th centuries brought increased division among the classes and sexes, and scent became the sign of the wealthy and elite – perfume once again became diversion, and sweet-smells of the garden became associated with femininity. The olfactory world was a busy place throughout much of history.
The Enlightenment began the severe repression of smell, as philosophers and scientists decided that vision was reason, and therefore at the top of the sense hierarchy. Although scent remained popular in the world of imagination and literature, memory and decadence, mainstream society rejected it, and we are still olfactorily illiterate. But now, more than ever, we have the means to resurrect scent in all manner of capacities. Seminal work in psychology, biology, and chemistry is revealing how smell works, how we perceive it, and what impact it has on our minds and our lives. Discoveries are being made regarding scent and sexuality, scent and art, scent and depression, and scent and technology. Some may feel that it’s presumptuous to elevate scent above the other senses, but after centuries of repression, it seems to me that olfaction warrants its own serious study. Jim Drobnick, author of the Smell Culture Reader, agrees: “there is certain strategic value in isolating the sense of smell…the goal is to invite immersion into an evanescent olfactocentric realm to consider how not only perception would change, but also thought” (3). Drobnick references Lewis Thomas, and his comment that smell “may not seem a profound enough problem to dominate all of the life sciences, but it contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries” (qtd. in Drobnick 3). And while there are a few notable scholars examining scent and culture, there is still a dire need for an examination of olfaction in regards to art, technology, and new media. Scent was once a vital part of culture, as history reveals – how can we make it so again?


Works Cited
Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. Toronto: Random House, 1990.
Classen, Constance, David Howes and Anthony Synnott. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge, 1994.
Drobnick, Jim. The Smell Culture Reader. New York: Berg, 2006.
Herz, Rachel. The Scent of Desire. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
Kant, I. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1798.
LeGuerer, Annick. Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell. New York: Random House, 1992.
Turin, Luca. The Secret of Scent. New York: Echo, 2006.

Read more!

Literature Review

Smell, Art, and Culture:
A Review of the Literature


Introduction

Isn’t gesamtkunstwerk a lovely word? Not only is it great fun to pronounce and spell, but what it means is beautiful – a complete, or total, work of art. Of course, Wagner coined the term to relate to opera, an art form where dance, music, theatre, poetry, narrative, design, and architecture all come together into this great, well, gesamtkunstwerk. But, what does “total” mean? Shouldn’t a “total” work of art completely immerse the senses? Shouldn’t a “total” work of art provide a feast for not only the eyes, but the ears, nose, hands, and mouth? Wagner addressed some of the senses, but he completely forgot the nose. And it isn’t only Wagner who left out our most primitive sense – a century of Western art has almost totally ignored the sense of smell. We live in a world of virtual reality, technology, and experimental art. The shift toward multimedia is prevalent in all aspects of our lives. But still, smell is virtually eliminated from art. It creeps into an occasional science fiction story, or plays around peripheral devices. It runs rampant in commercialism and advertising – the perfume industry is booming, and increasingly more companies are experimenting with smells to tempt consumers. There are scent-related greeting cards, and stickers, and toys. But, where is scent in the serious art world? Why is it not viewed as an integral component of a multimedia experience, or of a multisensory work of art? Why do we stay away from smell?
There are so many aspects of history, art history, civilization, philosophy, sociology, and technology to explore when trying to ascertain how art relates to the sense of smell, and why people typically either laugh at it or avoid it. We need to establish why sensory studies, especially olfaction, are worth investigating at all. We need to explore when and why and how the sense of smell was erased from society as a whole, and what impact that had on the art world. And, we need to closely review the few artists that are exploring olfactory art, to determine why they deem it relevant, what messages they are sending through their art, and whether or not their art is worthy of deeper study and analysis. Finally, we need to examine why scent is viewed the way it is today, and how technology is contributing to or detracting from those views. An authentic “total work of art” should involve as many of our senses as possible – but are we advanced enough technologically to include the sense of smell in our multisensory works? And is scent really important or serious enough to be of use to artists?
My research aims to prove that while many technologies tend to dismiss smell as “vestigial and obsolete”, new media really opens the opportunity for olfaction to be explored more completely, both culturally and in the art world (Drobnick 2006). Technology and cyber-existence have threatened “disembodiment”, but in reality, these virtual environments can provide for new and innovative studies in olfaction.

Overview of the Literature
Research on the sense of smell in culture and art is limited, but there is a real need to broaden our understanding of smell in culture and art in order to direct new technologies. In recent years, really just since the early 1980’s, there has been a shift toward sensory studies by historians, anthropologists, geographers, and literary scholars. In fact, David Howes, one of the leading researchers in sensory studies, calls it a “revolution of the senses” (2006). The revolution, he explains, is fueled by a growing body of research that shows senses are understood differently in different cultures and periods in history (2006). Sensory studies also seem to be a natural progression in postmodern expression, because they represent the tendency to move away from treating elements as physical wholes, and instead treat them as “bundles of interconnected experiences and properties” (Howes, 2006). Studying the senses, according to Howes, “emphasizes the dynamic, relational (intersensory – or multimodal, multimedia) and often conflicted nature of our everyday engagement with the sensuous world” (2007). Naturally, in a society moving increasingly toward virtual reality and multisensory approaches, understanding how humans take in and process information is a worthwhile study, and one of interest to all sorts of research.
Jim Drobnick, editor of The Smell Culture Reader, has a brief review of the literature in his introduction. He declares that the seminal moment for olfactory literature was in 1982, with Alain Corbin’s The Foul and the Fragrant. Published in French, the book focused on scent and everyday life, as well as the influence of scent on major political, social, and cultural events in France during 18th and 19th century modernization. In the world of fiction, the groundbreaker was by German novelist Patrick Suskind, a novel called Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. The novel, about a psychopathic killer with a highly developed sense of smell, sparked much interest in and attention to olfaction in the realm of research, such as Rindisbacher’s The Smell of Books (1992), de Rijke’s Nose Book (2000), Carlisle’s Scents (2004), and Hertel’s Making Sense (2005). Since the field is relatively new, especially in terms of olfaction and technology, almost all of research I found is in the last twenty years. This is relevant because it is only recently that we have even begun to understand how smell works, let alone how it can be incorporated into art and technology. In some areas of research, topics emerge and disappear as time progresses – this is not the case with olfaction, as almost everything is new. I did find one source (1922) that noted that smell is not connected to memory in literature until the 19th century, but this source presented such a primitive understanding of how smell works that I essentially dismissed it, except to demonstrate how “new” our understanding of smell really is. Also unique to smell is its relevance and application in a wide array of fields of study. While I limited my findings to culture and art, Jim Drobnick explains why the topic can be addressed in all sorts of areas. He notes (2006) that smell has the ability to mediate contrasts – object and subject, the material and the physiological, he world and the perceiver, culture and ideology, stimulus and symbol, matter and meaning, material and social, sensation and perception. He explains that attention to scents can make us “rethink the idea of what constitutes culture” (p. 6).
Presentation/Critique of the Literature
As olfaction is applicable to so many areas, and I’m using it to reevaluate what culture means, so many themes in my research are appropriate. Jim Drobnick, Constance Classen, and David Howes, have compiled what seem to be the most comprehensive studies of smell and culture. Drobnick divides his Smell Culture Reader (2006) into seven main sections, though he emphasizes (and I have found this to be true) that “many of the themes and practices concerning scents cross over…categorical divisions” (p. 5). Drobnick’s seven divisions are fear of smell, the spatial roles of smell, scent and identity, perfumery, scent and sexuality, scent and art (including digital media and technology), and scent and spirituality. While all these areas fascinate me, I think that sections III (scent and identity) and VI (scent and art) are most relevant to my interests.
Section III contains five essays on scent and identity. The first is a chapter from Alain Corbin’s The Foul and the Fragrant (1986), which describes the major shift toward deodorization in 18th century France. While the shift was in some ways health-related, Corbin says that it began a new olfactory awareness. This appears to get at the beginnings of cultural interest in smell, at least in Western society. The second and third essay in Drobnick’s book discuss individuals with remarkable capabilities, Helen Keller (1908) and Stephen D., a patient of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Keller titles her essay “Sense and Sensibility”, and in it she argues for the nobility of the sense of smell and offers one of my favorite quotes: “Smell is a potent wizard that transports us a thousand miles and all the years we have ever lived” (p. 181). Sacks chapter from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) about Stephen D. describes hyperosomia, a heightened sense of smell, and anosmia, the complete loss of smell. While the patients described are anomalies, the essay helps to illustrate the importance of smell to everyday life and how its appreciation can be overlooked until it is absent. I consider an understanding of the contributions smell makes to our lives a critical hurdle in smell’s assimilation into art and culture. The last two essays in this section deal with odor preferences, how nostalgia and science impact the sense of smell. Alan Hirsch offers a survey done in Chicago in 1991, wherein he interviews 1,000 shoppers to determine their connections with smell and memory. He found that people born in different decades have similar feelings about certain smells, for example, those born in the 1920’s have feelings of nostalgia when smelling pine, flowers, and manure, while those born in the 1970’s are partial to baby powder, suntan oil, and felt-tipped pens. I disagree with Hirch’s research, however – I think that while some similarities may emerge based upon what life was like for certain time periods, individual experience is far too varied to make such generalized assumptions about smell and nostalgia. Finally, Rachel Herz’ article (2001) on odor preferences gives me a “quick and dirty” understanding of how smell works, which helps as I’ve been wading through volumes of scientific books with hundreds of pages of explanation. Herz supports my ideas about smell and the individual – she explains that our “specific personal history with specific odors gives them meaning, making them pleasant or unpleasant to us” (p. 190). This raises some questions for me about how olfaction can be used in art, as individual experience has an even more profound impact in relation to scent than visual stimuli.
Section VI of Drobnick’s book reveals how smell has been incorporated into art and technology. I also have found several articles by Drobnick himself (1998, 2007) that review specific examples of olfactory work in contemporary art. From Aileen Gatten’s description of a Japanese incense ceremony, to Drobnick’s discussion of installation works involving cooking ceremonies, to Mark Paterson’s “Digital Scratch and Virtual Sniff”, the section highlights the ideas that while olfactory art is only just emerging, we now have enough fragrant artworks to “conduct investigations into their unique characteristics” (p. 328).
The other major work I have found as I research smell, art, and culture, is Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell by Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott. The book, resulting from a research project called “The Varieties of Sensory Experience” based at Concordia University, Montreal from 1988 to 1991, offers “the first comprehensive exploration of the cultural role of odours in Western history”. Topics range from “medieval odors of sanctity to the aroma-therapies of South America, and from olfactory stereotypes of gender and ethnicity in the modern West to the role of smell in postmodernity”. The book will provide critical background I think, to my own conclusions about advancements that can be made in olfaction through contemporary art and technology. A clearer understanding of the history of smell will provide essential building blocks for my investigations into how olfaction can be further assimilated into art and culture.
The mere fact that olfactory research is so new gives evidence of the need for further study. Researchers are only just beginning to connect the culture and history of scent with new media and technology. While Drobnick alludes to many of the possibilities in olfaction, there are very few scholars even remotely aware of how scent contributes to perception, art and culture – and even fewer who are familiar with the various possibilities and methods available through new technologies.
Conclusions
The most critical researchers in the field of olfaction appear to be Jim Drobnick and Constance Classen, as their names emerge again and again. David Howes and Anthony Synnott are also important, though their research is a little broader, related to sensory studies in general rather than the sense of smell. Although these researchers offer critical background for my research, and Drobnick even provides some specific works worthy of investigation, there appears to be no comprehensive study of olfaction and contemporary art.
Each of the researchers I reviewed has major contributions to my studies – Drobnick (2006) describes what he terms “olfactocentrism”, or isolating the sense of smell (3). Immersing ourselves into an olfactory world, Drobnick thinks, will force us to consider how perception and thought change, thereby causing us to “rethink the idea of what constitutes culture” (6). Constance Classen provides a solid background from which to launch my research. A clear understanding of how olfaction has been perceived throughout history, especially in relation to culture and modernism, will demonstrate how scholars and the public might perceive olfactory art and how technology can impact those perceptions.
Although research in olfaction is relatively new, much of what I have found seems relevant and contemporary. I think that olfactory studies are developing quickly as we increase our understanding of perception, technology, and virtual reality. There is very little research at this point about olfaction and technology, because we are still wildly behind in our understanding of how olfaction works and its implications in the world of art and media. While the existing research can provide a framework for my own studies, much of my interests will be new and virtually unexplored territory. In a world that is both heightening and isolating our senses through technology, studies of the implications of sensory awareness, particularly our most primitive sense of smell, are an integral part of understanding our culture.

References
Add 1922 book!
Carlisle, J. (2004). Common Scents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Classen, C.,D. Howes & A. Synnott (1994). Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. New York: Routledge.
Corbin, A. (1986). “The New Calculus of Olfactory Pleasure”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 167-179) Oxford: Berg.
de Rijke, V. (2000). Nose Book, London: Middlesex University Press.
Drobnick, J. (2006). The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
Drobnick, J.. (1986). “Eating Nothing: Cooking Aromas in Art and Culture”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 342-355) Oxford: Berg.
Gatten, A. (1977). “A Wisp of Smoke”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 331-341) Oxford: Berg.
Hertel, R. (2005). Making Scents. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Herz, R. (2001). “I Know What I Like: Understanding Odor Preferences”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 190-203) Oxford: Berg.
Hirsch, A. (1992). “Nostalgia, the Odors of Childhood and Society”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 187-189) Oxford: Berg.
Howes, D. (2006).Charting the Sensorial Revolution. Senses and Society. 1, 113-128.
Howes, D. (2007). Architecture of the Senses. Sense of the City Exhibition Catalog, Retrieved 7 May 2007, from http://www.david-howes.com/senses/Consert-Gaze.htm
Keller, H. (1908). “Sense and Sensibility”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 180-183) Oxford: Berg.
Paterson, M.W.D. (2005). “Digital Scratch and Virtual Sniff: Simulating Scents”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 358-367).
Rindisbacher, H. (1992). The Smell of Books. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sacks, O. (1985). “The Dog Beneath the Skin”. In Jim Drobnick Ed. The Smell Culture Reader (2006, pp. 184-186) Oxford: Berg.
Suskind, P. trans. J. E. Woods (1986). Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. New York: Pocket.

Read more!

Other Cultures and Smell

I finally got one of the books I've been looking for since last fall - The Cultural History of Smell by Connie Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott. They were part of a research project called The Varieties of Sensory Experience in Montreal from 1988-1991. They were also funded by the Olfactory Research Fund - I wonder if it still exists. Maybe they'll give me some money.

The book seems great, with sections on the meaning and power of smell, a history of smell from the Middle ages to modernity, odour and power, and commercialization. I'm looking forward to reading it - if I ever have time.

The part that jumped out at me right away, however, was a chart (or several, actually) that outlined how some other cultures view smell. One of the biggest problems with smell in Western cultures is the fact that there is such a limited vocabulary to describe it. Often, we can only use other senses to describe smells, or say that something smells like something else. I'll bet if we had a better smell vocabulary, we'd be a culture much more in tune with the importance and significance of smell.

Here are some of the cool new words I've discovered:

The olfactory classification system of the Kapsiki of Cameroon (forgive the missing accents, I don't feel like figuring out how to do that):

1. Medeke: the smell of various animals
2. Verevere: the smell of civet
3. Rhwazhake: the smell of urine
4. Urduk'duk: the smell of milk
5. Shireshire: the smell of faeces of various animals
6. Ndrimin'ye: the smell of spoilt food
7. Ndaleke: the smell of rotting meat or of a corpse
8. Duf'duf: the smell of white millet beer (mpedli) - I wonder if Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons, knew that "Duf" was a word for BEER SMELL!
9. Hes'hese: the smell of roast food
10. Zede: the smell of edible food
11. Kalawuve: the smell of human faeces
12. Kamerhweme: the smell of old grain
13. Rhweredlake: the smell of fresh meat
14. Dzafe: a fleeting smell of any kind

Inca olfactory terms

1. Mutquini: to smell something
2. Mukacuni: to smell a good odour
3. Aznacuni: to smell a bad odour
4. Mutqquchacuni: for a group to smell something together
5. Mutqquchini: to make someone smell something
6. Mucacumuni or mutqquimuni: to secretly sniff out what is being planned
7. Aznachicun: to have oneself or let oneself be smelled
8. Camaycuni: to come across a food odour, to inhale, to inspire

These two paragraphs are pretty cool, too:

"We find in the languages of other cultures a greater variety of olfactory terms than is available in English, or indeed any of the other languages of Europe. There is a general tendency, however, for odours (like flavours, but unlike colours) to be classified according to a division of pleasant/unpleasant. This points perhaps to the primordial importance of smell as a means of discriminating between what is safe and enjoyable, and hence pleasing to the human organism, and what is dangerous and hurtful, hence displeasing. There is also a tendency for odour terms to refer to the sources from which odours emanate - as in "tapir odour" - and not to some essential quality of the odour itself, such as pungency. The reason for this would seem to be the widely perceived intrinsic association of odours with their sources.

...it is important to realize that a limited olfactory vocabulary does not preclude extensive olfactory symbolism. Although there may not be many ways to speak about odours, an immense number of odours can still be recognized, charged with social and emotional content, and remembered. In fact, it may be that odours tend to be processed in a direct, non-verbal way by the brain and so elude expression through language. This means that to undertand the role of odour in different cultures, one must go beyond language and explore the realm of practice" (113).

Read more!

And We're Off!

So, I started a blog on I-Web. Then I realized that I couldn't quite figure out how to publish the website and still be able to update the blog frequently, so I've moved to this one until such time as I have a great revelation in the web-publishing arena.

Welcome to olfactocentrism, my blog about my new coolest interest, the sense of smell - its history, culture, and technology. I'm sure I'll talk about other things too, this is my blog and I can do that if I want. But mostly it will be a place to stick current research and musings on smell and all its fascinating components.

I have read and re-read the introduction of Jim Drobnick’s The Smell Culture Reader. I’ve already learned so much from it, and begun to ponder the possibilities. Here are my favorite points so far:

* The sense of smell is “mired in paradox” (1)
* While information technologies tend to dismiss smell as “vestigial and obsolete”, new media really opens the opportunity for smell to be explored more completely (1)
* Smell has been predicted to be a sense that will disappear, because of the continual threat of “disembodiment” in digital technologies and cyberworlds, to the extent that some have even proclaimed “the senses have no future” (Moravec 1997), but “it is in precisely the field of technology that olfaction is gaining widespread applicability” (2).
* There is an urgent need for a broader understanding of smell in order to critique and direct new technologies, especially because the technologies are either controlled and completely dominated by the developers, or made “subject to hyperbole in the popular press” (3)
* There is “strategic value” in what Drobnick calls “olfactocentrism”, or isolating the sense of smell. Immersion into a olfactory world forces us to consider how perception and thought change (3)
*Contemporary literature about smell essentially began in 1982, with Alain Corbin’s The Foul and the Fragrant, which focused on the influence of odor on major social, political and cultural events in 18th and 19th century France (3)
* Smell has an amazing interplay and diversity - it mediates so many contrasts: object and subject, the material and the physiological, the world and the perceiver, culture and ideology, stimulus and symbol, matter and meaning, material and social, sensation and perception - Alfred Gell calls this contradictory status “semiological ambiguity” (5). This, coupled with the “paucity of vocabulary concerning smell”, forces any study of smell to be interdisciplinary and innovative.
*Attention to scents can make us “rethink the idea of what constitutes culture” (6).

Read more!