If There Ever Was

via Fed by Birds, a fascinating description of an exhibition of "extinct and impossible smells".
















The perfumes include a lovely recreated Edwardian scent from the Titanic, a meteorite hitting Peruvian mud, the smell of communism - some kind of institutional soap, I'd guess, with a hint of bleach - and the Mir space station, which it turns out was plagued by "the pungent odour of pickling gym socks", created by the sweat of vodka-drinking Russian cosmonauts. The rub'n'sniff technology works reasonably well, although one of the smells is so strong it seems to drown out the first few: think it's the sun's rays - "hydrogen and helium with a molten cocktail of copper, terbium, strontium, antimony and europium". Had no idea the sun smelt so terrible.

2 comments:

ArtSparker said...

This is my fourth comment - I'd better stop hereso you don't feel overwhelmed. Obviously, I like your senisibility and have bookmarked you site. This exhibit reminds me of something you would (observe?take part in?) at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which recently had a musical performance based on vibrations in the composer's inner ear canal. mjt.org

Jen Bradford said...

Wow! I wish I could see more on the mjt site - especially the fruit stone carvings.

Comment all you want, btw, it's always nice to get feedback. Glad you're enjoying the blog!