In addition to light, sound, color and other design dimensions scent is increasingly used to influence human emotions and behavior. Aromatherapy is the discipline that has developed this expertise and knowledge of centuries. Scent Marketing is currently an obvious case. But there are also non-commercial contexts as this story from...
Smithsonian Design Museum: Design Beyond Vision!
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision” . In the 1980s the Swiss design thinker Lucius Burckhardt coined: “Design is invisible“.
Fragrant patterns in big data !
The web facility Google Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The horizontal axis of the main graph represents time (starting from 2004), and the vertical is how often selected terms are searched for...
Scent Culture Monitor
In 2015, we started Scent Culture News to shape and build scent culture as field. Following our mission we have highlighted and connected fragmented themes, ideas, references, and projects that relate to the sense of smell in culture, business and society. More recently, we made a pause and reflected on recurring...
Ingredient disclosures & stakeholder pluralism
The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Skin Deep Database is a prominent go-to for all things health when it comes to cosmetics. Last February, Unilever joined this fragrance disclosure scheme. Accordingly, Unilever announced a bold new initiative to provide detailed information on fragrance ingredients for all products in its multibillion-dollar portfolio of personal care...
Gallery exhibition at Berlin: Perfume in art & fashion
Michael Müller, best known as a sculptor, shows in his recent exhibition at the Berlin based gallery Thomas Schulte a series of small sculptures taking the form of perfumes, soaps etc. The perfume contains a drop of the artist’s sweat as Michael Müller remarks in an interview:
Narratives describing smells
“The idea was to create simple still lives looking at the memory and history of different perfumes and creating a narrative to describe their smell through vessels, subtle textures and the balance of notes.”
How do your headphones smell?
Have you ever noticed how your headphones smell? Do you expect a review of headphones talking about the olfactory qualities of the product? The recent review by Wired demonstrates the necessity of a multisensory product design:
Criminalizing food odors in Italy!
Food odors frequently provoke and trigger public debate on olfactory tolerance. There is a current case on food odors in Italy.
Deo-odorizing can be dangerous
The Times recently reported that a schoolgirl died after being overcome by fumes from her deodorant while on a family holiday:
New Materials for de-odorizing the fashion world
Wool-blend tees are promoted for keeping your outdoor stink-free as Wired reported:
If your scent wrote a song…
Studio Folie is an olfactive design studio founded by Kaya Sorhaindo. It is known for projects that inscribe new meaning long associated with classical perfumery such as Le Cinema Olfactif .
Scent as a medium in contemporary art
Artist and writer Catherine Haley Epstein, provides an overview on the role of scent in contemporary art on Temporary Art Review. What is interesting is the broader storyline:
Virtual reality, digital lives & the interest in smell
A feature on some recent developments with respect to scent culture appeared in The Guardian on 16 September 2016: “technology addiction makes us crave smells”.
The problem with pleasure!
Scents and in particular fragrances are often discussed as enjoable and pleasurable experiences. Thus this recent scholarly book deserves a closer look when discussing Huxley’s feelies or James Joyce and the scent of modernity.
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