There are no limits to human ingenuity. Jordan Todorov writes at Atlas Obscura, for example, about an “olfactory artist” who has been working to recreate the scents of cities for more than a decade. And why not?
” ‘Berlin smells of cigars and boiled cabbage.’ This observation comes from the 1963 travelogue Thrilling Cities by the British author Ian Fleming … But for Berlin-based olfactory artist Sissel Tolaas, who creates ‘smellscapes’ of major cities, it smells like so much more.
“ ‘Every city has an identity like we humans do. And every city is unique smell-wise,’ explains Tolaas, a half-Norwegian, half-Icelandic expatriate artist with background in chemistry, linguistics, mathematics, and visual arts. ‘The odor depends on things like climate, geography, demography etc. Inside the city, smells differs from neighborhood to neighborhood.’ …
“Tolaas is traveling around the world and mapping its cities, one smell at a time. The project, called SmellScapes, has taken her to 35 cities so far, from London and Paris to Cape Town to Kansas City (both of them).
“Tolaas started working on her SmellScapes more than a decade ago. Most of them are commissioned by either creative platforms, city councils, or universities and private foundations, and they serve an amazingly wide variety of purposes. For example, her SmellScape of Mexico City, developed in 2001 in collaboration with the Harvard graduate student teacher program, was a creative way to understand pollution. …
” ‘I walked around and [caught] in a playful manner the smells in different neighborhoods. The goal was reproducing the smell of pollution—the car exhaust, the refrigerator, the air conditioner … Then I gave the smells to people and asked them to articulate them which made them understand better what’s causing the pollution.’ …
“Tolaas collects the smell samples in a small glass tube called tennex. Then the container is sent to her research partners from International Flavors & Fragrances, an American perfumery corporation headquartered in New York City, which according to Tolaas is ‘one of a small number of companies which controls how the world smells and tastes.’…
“After analyzing the sample with a gas chromatograph, IFF sends Tolaas a formula that contains the fingerprint of the smell captured, describing all the subtle nuances in great detail. Using this data chart, Tolaas replicates the smell in her lab, combining some of the nearly 4,000 individual molecules she has at her disposal. The result, Tolaas explains, is as close as possible to the original smell.” More at Atlas Obscura, here.
I am going to start paying more attention to neighborhood scents. I know, for sure, we have pizza aroma and dry cleaning chemicals and the smell of trains grinding to a halt on metal tracks. But in spring, we also have lots of flower smells.
I may come back to this.
Photo: Atlas Obscura
Sissel Tolaas uses a nano-scale to measure the smell molecules.
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