Led by the Nose. Robert Chalmers

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      Merging worlds

      “Smell. They are taking our smells away… You don’t know who the hell you are dealing with any more.”

In an interview recorded to mark his birthday, Mel Brooks’ celebrated comic character, the 2,000 Year Old Man^[1], addressed what he considered to be the most worrying development in the modern world. His major concern was not, he explained, related to matters such as world peace or the erosion of individual liberty. “It’s something much more important than that,” he said. “Smell. They are taking our smells away; all of our own individual smells. They have a smell for everything today. Under the arms. Up the nose. In the crotch.” The consequence, he complained, was that “You don’t know who the hell you’re dealing with any more. You can’t tell the difference between men and women. You can’t tell who’s who. And that,” he concluded, “is no way to live.”

      The 2,000 Year Old Man was not noted for his insight or perception: he recalled having snubbed such figures as Moses and Jesus (“a thin lad who came into the store but never bought anything”) opting instead to worship “this guy called Phil.” His fears over the pervasiveness of artificial scent, however, are proving to have been a rare moment of prescience.

To most of us, who have long been accustomed to the computerised broadcasting of sound and vision, the idea of transmitting smells digitally still seems absurd. On June 12 1977, viewers of Reports Extra, a late-night BBC show broadcast in Manchester, were shown a large cone fitted with antennae. The presenter introduced the device as a “Raman spectroscope” capable of radiating smell directly into a viewer’s living room through their television set. “A pleasant country smell,” he explained, “not manure.” The station received 172 calls from credulous or intoxicated Mancunians, the great majority asserting that their houses were now agreeably perfumed with the scent of newly-mown hay or grass. Only 16 respondents reported no smell. Two complained that the Raman technology had triggered their hay fever. The success of this experiment in the power of suggestion, conducted by Michael O’Mahony, a Bristol University psychology lecturer, was the more remarkable in that the BBC had broadcast a very similar item as its April Fool’s joke only two years earlier^[2].

      And so, when I informed friends that I had just taken delivery of a Scentee – a small device which enables its owner to send or receive aromas telephonically – most naturally assumed it to be another hoax.

      The Scentee may not look like much. A miniature plastic globe, or so-called dongle, a little smaller than a cherry tomato, it connects to the audio socket of your smartphone. Download the relevant app, and the device can be activated either independently, by the user, or remotely, when another Scentee owner gives you a call. The dongle glows blue and emits, in a delicate flourish which resembles the vapour from an e-cigarette, the fragrance from whichever chemical cartridge has been loaded into it. Available scents include bacon, short ribs, coffee and buttered potato.

      The device was manufactured in Japan, inspired by the research work of Adrian David Cheok. A multi award-winning scientist, formerly head of Singapore’s Mixed Reality Lab, Cheok now has the title of Professor of Pervasive Computing at London’s City University. The Scentee is still a novelty in Britain; during a demonstration given in June, at the capital’s Natural History Museum, many schoolchildren in the audience argued, with some warmth, that UK sales would increase considerably should the professor seek to develop a broader range of fragrances, such as camel fart.

      Cheok, 42, meets me at his HQ, a small laboratory in City University’s main building. An engaging and articulate man, dressed all in black, he looks more like a seasoned rock guitarist than a research scientist. He is accompanied by two of his PhD students, German-born Marius Braun and Jordan Tewell, from Ohio.

“I was especially impressed,” I tell Cheok, “when I dialled up the mashed potatoes.” (Hearing myself say this, I can’t help informing the professor that, over the years, I have interviewed one man who has walked on the moon, and another who ate an entire Cessna light aircraft in Venezuela, and still this conversation feels as surreal as any I’ve ever had^[3]). “But what,” I ask him, “is the point of this technology? Is anybody actually using the Scentee?”

      “Absolutely they are. Previously I was based at Keio University in Tokyo. We were doing a big project on food media. I was collaborating with a friend, Koki Tsubouchi, who is an entrepreneur. We, as the academics, maintained our focus on the research, while Koki’s company developed a commercial product,” which, he adds, “became the first portable device for producing smell. Scentee,” he adds, “is a profitable company. They sell thousands of units a month in Japan.”

      Cheok grew up in Adelaide, where he was born to a Malaysian father and Greek mother. He began his academic life in Australia as an electrical engineer, though it’s difficult to imagine him ever having considered devoting his life to so constricted and orthodox a discipline. You sense in him an unusual confluence of rigour, creative imagination and just a little mischief.

      “I can see that this thing is fun,” I tell him. “But is it ever going to be more than a gimmick?”

      “Primarily,” he replies, “our work here is concerned with digital sensory communication, which means sending taste, smells and touch to other people anywhere in the world. For instance, you could be watching a cookery show and not only see the food, but smell and taste it at the same time.”

      Researcher

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