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The Smell of Music

The creative challenge is a little different for the more abstract fragrances. One, intended to evoke chaos, is a deliberately mismeasured odorous soup. “There is an ingredient in it called Veloutone, a green fruity note that is a little reminiscent of a peach skin,” Laudamiel says. “Usually you use a tiny bit. Here it is almost 10 percent of the formula.” Laudamiel emphasizes that if you just threw a heap of fragrance notes together at random, the result would not smell chaotic. As fractal geometricians know, chaos has its own organization. “You have to create something which is almost the opposite of what you do in perfumery, where everything has to be round, in harmony,” he says. “Here you want to take people to a huge chaotic vortex.” He laughs. “When you want to do something that smells good, it never smells good, and if you want to create something that smells chaotic, it is never chaotic.”

One groundbreaking aspect of this ScentOpera is the technology that has been devised to disseminate the scents. Compared with sound or light, fragrances travel slowly over space. This sluggish rate of transmission makes it hard to ensure each audience member inhales the same odor at the same time. Furthermore, before a new smell is introduced, the previous one must be removed, or else the lingering odors may run together like smudged watercolors. To surmount these obstacles, Matthew enlisted Cecil Balmond, a star engineer at the Arup firm in London who collaborates frequently with architect Rem Koolhaas, and Fläkt Woods, a company that ventilates airports and skyscrapers. Unable to find a machine to do what was needed, Fläkt Woods invented one. “The scent microphone will be directed directly to your nose, so your nose is smelling only the scented air,” Laudamiel says. Plus, the engineers temporarily upgraded the auditorium’s old-fashioned ventilation system.

ScentOpera’s creators also had to confront the fundamental limitations of the human organism. Governed by breathing, the nose absorbs information differently from the eye, ear, tongue, or fingertip. “To breathe already takes five or six seconds,” Laudamiel observes. “There is a timing you cannot go below. If you play one scent for only one second, you have the risk that the people who are exhaling won’t get it. And you don’t want people to hyperventilate, because it’s horrible and boring.” Remembering the sequence of preceding scents is also problematic for those who are not fragrance professionals. Adding to the complexity, prior smells influence your perception of the next scent, even if the ventilating system has removed all traces of the old aroma. Perhaps Jan Van Eyck confronted similar quandaries when he was perfecting the technique of oil painting. And maybe, allowing for changes in language, he would have expressed himself with similar insouciance. “It’s gymnastic,” Laudamiel says. “And a creative nightmare. But it’s cool.”