Surround Smell

You have the surround sound, the widescreen, the high definition. Your choice of lights, screen, sound. The next step is: Smells! As virtual reality continues to become a more and more realistic situation, designer David Sweeney allows our nose to enter another false reality: the smell jungle.

Light music and sweet fragrance along with a cuppa, is the perfect way to begin a day at work. While music refreshes our mind, fragrance evokes memories, revitalizing the way we think and enables us to tackle different situations. Keeping in mind the stress and demands of our work life, David Sweeney has popped up with a scent diffuser that relives different physiological situations by defusing related fragrances throughout the day. Dubbed the ‘Surround Smell,’ the diffuser can eject about 16 distinctive yet refreshing scents that are filled in the diffuser by the piezoelectric micro-pumps. The mix is broadcast into the room by a fan. The device creates a constantly adapting smellscape. Some elements of the scent convey information while others complement these by evoking awareness beyond the task in hand. Smells for this project were designed by Sissel Tolaas at the IFF research Lab in Berlin.

These devices harness the fact that smells evoke memories and can alter the way we think. They notify us of important information, but in a non-intrusive & subconscious manner. This provides an alternative to receiving all our daily information through our eyes and ears, instead routing some of it down an olfactory channel.