Researchers in the field of virtual reality (VR) are developing a device allowing you to smell different odors associated with the images emitted by the VR headset. Following the inconclusive attempts of the odorous cinema of the 1950s, the proposed mechanisms now show encouraging signs. Until now, the metaverse was content to reproduce the visible and auditory aspects, sometimes also touch, but, with the addition of smell, a further step has been taken. It adds a new emotional dimension to the user experience.
However, this odoriferous technology can be perplexing, especially when it only involves improving an individual’s enjoyment of video games. However, by operating on the limbic system stimulating areas of the brain linked to memory and emotions, these investigations do not stop there. Whether with virtual reality or otherwise, several studies are taking place, particularly in the medical field, more precisely on the side of olfactotherapy.
Long considered the most primitive of the senses, smell finds, within scientific research, a notable importance, thus confirming the vital function it occupies for our individual and social existences.
Author of the book The powers of smell (1988), the philosopher and anthropologist Annick Le Guérer makes smell “the sense of the future”. Unlike an entire Western philosophical tradition, the rehabilitation of this sense allows us to access new knowledge. For too long, as human animals, our apprehension of the world has minimized the knowledge it provides in favor of other sensory systems. Considered an archaic sense, smell has been relegated to its carnal nature.
In The malaise in culture (1930), the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, will emphasize that civilization developed by gradually abandoning olfactory stimuli, associated with sexuality. However, the birth of this therapeutic method also showed a keen interest in the nose, this very sensitive organ. Today, this science of unconscious experience also pays special attention to patients’ relationships with odors. The influence of aromas on our attitudes is increasingly conquering the business world, whether in the industrial or commercial sectors.
Since good smells stimulate our behavior, olfactory marketing undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of it. Therefore, if smell becomes the sense of the future, it remains ambiguous. Research in the field of olfaction opens up lucrative prospects when it comes to leisure or business, but, in the artistic sphere, it allows the exploration of an entire sensual universe associated more with the “sense of the earth”.
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the rare Western philosophers to have taken the sense of smell seriously, the “sense of the earth” invites us to fully assume our relationship with the world in so many experiences linked to life on Earth. He who said “All my genius is in my nostrils” never ceased to consider artistic expression as a true stimulus to life. Directed by Didier Morelli, this issue of the review Space brings together texts that present a variety of artists’ practices in which the activation of the sense of smell offers new avenues to understanding our environment.
Thanks to the growing omnipresence of olfaction, for the authors collaborating on this issue, it is a question of analyzing different processes or techniques with a view to emphasizing the importance of smell across a wide range of traditions, disciplines and worldviews. […] The scents, whatever they may be, are closely associated with a particular environment. They have a certain evocative power. This power presupposes a culture or associates us with a social category. In addition, smell has repercussions on the sensory memory of places.
In the contribution of the duo Debra Riley Parr and Gwenn-Aël Lynn, this future of smells foresees futures in free fall; futures that “give a glimpse of unexplored territories”. Echoing an olfactory art “in a context of great planetary distress”, the artist Carl Trahan offers a perfume called Erebe, which evokes “a dark and chthonic universe”. However, by referring to the works of Quebecer Julie C. Fortier and Colombian Oswaldo Maciá, the Riley Parr and Lynn tandem also reminds us that this unpredictable future sometimes gives way to “exhilarating possibilities”.
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