Hongi is the name of the traditional form of greeting among the Māori tribe in New Zealand: Two people press noses to each other and inhale one another’s breath. Due to the current coronavirus outbreak it has recently been banned.
communication
“Face-to-face interaction penetrates in a gaseous form into our most intimate inner being. The current Coronavirus outbreak surfaces a forgotten concept of communication that is deeply ingrained in culture: Face-to-face communication is a miasmic intercourse.”
– CLAUS NOPPENEY
“Smells are not decodable. Nor can they be inventoried, for no inventory of them can have either a beginning or an end. They ‘inform’ only about the most fundamental realities, about life and death, and they are pan of no significant dichotomies except perhaps that between life beginning and life ending. There is no pathway here other than the direct one between the receiving centre and the perimeter of its range – no pathway other than the nose and the scent themselves. Somewhere between information and the direct stimulation of a brutal response, the sense of smell had its glory days when animality still predominated over ‘culture’, rationality and education – before these factors, combined with a thoroughly cleansed space, brought about the complete atrophy of smell. One can’t help feeling, though, that to carry around an atrophied organ which still claims its due must be somewhat pathogenic.” – HENRI LEFEVBRE
“The focus on smell in design does not mean the addition of applied scent to all aspects of the design, but rather the awareness of smell as an inherent dimension of it … This awareness may lead to the realization that the appropriate solution is the removal or masking of a smell…The negotiation of odorizing and deodorizing is a skillset that should be part of every designer’s toolbox, as that awareness in itself is increasingly an important factor in the success or failure of design.” – ASHRAF OSMAN, CLAUS NOPPENEY & NADA ENDRISSAT
Working with the business world is a way to show the impact of research. It has been our ambition to make scent culture research relevant for business from the outset. This post features a few milestones (i.e. industry workshops, management education) demonstrating how this is going forward.
“In Hades, psyches perceive each other by smell alone.” – HERAKLT
There are different ways how to address smell in advertizing. Campaigns in perfumery are an obvious case. Moreover, we recently discussed how even negative feedback on the olfactory quality of a product is used in advertizing. The example of today stands out in a different way.
“Wir sind zur olfaktorischen Kommunikation gezwungen.” – CLAUS NOPPENEY
“At the beginning was actually not the Verb, but the Scent: for chemical detection was the communication tool used by the first bacteria appearing on earth, for food and reproduction.” –
CHRISTOPHE LAUDAMIEL, CHRISTOPH HORNETZ, BRAJA MOOKHERJEE & SUBHA PATEL
The term scenthesizer has been coined in the science fiction a long time ago. Now it is a real option marketed as a djtechtool. Have a look!
Human interaction includes contact with the bacterial universe of another person ejected into the air:
Communication is digital and instant. You can watch videos and hear voices of your loved ones. But smell? Not so much. It is interesting to see how the emphasis and the underlying hopes und utopian ideas shift when reading the numerous articles on Onotes, Ophones and similar projects. Here is an article from the New York Times.