IT'S ALMOST NEVER a good thing when, sitting among hundreds in a theater, a strong and distinct aroma fills the room. However, entrepreneur Stewart Matthew and veteran perfumer Christophe Laudamiel mean to do precisely that with 23 scents as part of a 40-minute “operatic” work that bucks genre classification and aims to pioneer new forms of artistic expression.
These scents aren’t Maude’s clunky “Odorifics,” played out of a rickety-looking Victrola. Aeosphere’s scent apparatus aspires to the slickness of new media. Each audience chair will be outfitted with scent “microphones” linked to the central organ that will discharge a litany of time-controlled scents. This delivery system was specifically designed over the past two years for this event in collaboration with Flakt Woods, a global leader in integrated ventilation, which Matthew calls “not a sexy industry,” but, for this challenging project, a vital one. Laudamiel has a chemistry background that facilitated the temporal precision needed to control scent duration based on uniquely calculated diffusion rates, no small task due to the unpredictability of wafting molecules. Unlike the immediacy of the visual, aural or tactile, smell relies on the diffusion of molecules through air. This precision is critical to a time-based work, and particularly one hoping to identically manipulate a broad range of audience members.The experience is already incredibly subjective, as artistic exhibitions go, since smell is strongly linked to personal memory. Neuroanatomically, memories are located in the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and amygdala, both of which are closely tied to the olfactory organs. Also, physical factors will limit some attendees; for instance, Matthew points out “smokers can’t smell.” However, the coolly black-leather clad Matthew, when asked if his project is inherently subjective shakes his buzzedbald, trendily bespectacled head and grins, “not the way we’re doing it.”
ScentOpera’s all-natural smells are “scents that have never been smelled before.” Matthew and Laudamiel use these new scents to avoid scent-recall, providing as unified as possible an experience to the audience. With the new scents set against a new, sound-filled context, Matthew means to create situations where audience members synchronously learn new meanings for each of Laudamiel’s concocted scents. A prelude will “acclimate people to this new language of expression,” so that a “meaningful transmission takes place.”
The scents themselves are “the cast of characters” that interact as dramatis personae, unfurling themselves to creep around nasal membranes in the sensual illustration of Matthew’s story. Smell takes the place of the voice in this “opera,” and “Green Aria” is its diva. For opera aficionados, the “opera” label may seem inappropriate, but Matthew characterizes each scent as a “voice.” In fragrance parlance, the story of a scent is told through a “top note, middle note and base note,” which amounts to “a kind of chord.” In this way, we see how Matthew and Laudamiel mean to treat scent as music. He adds, “Top notes are the volatiles and they evaporate more quickly than the base notes, which are more staid.” Indeed, sopranos do have a reputation for volatility, and basses for their rich, grounding strength. By playing with these scent combinations, Laudamiel hopes to make his characters really sing.
The
project began when Matthew, then a frustrated financier dabbling in
film production, attempted to bid for the rights to adapt Patrick
Suskind’s 1985 novel Perfume:The Story of a Murderer. During
the negotiation process, Matthew found “The traditional Hollywood
attitudes of how narrative works extremely boring,” and wondered, “How
can an audiovisual medium really convey the sense of smell?” This led
him to a final, formative question: “Why not provide a complete theatrical experience?” The ScentOpera is
an initial trial step along this path. “What’s unique about our project
is that we are attempting to use scent as a vehicle to tell a story, to
draw a narrative arc with a succession of scents,” Matthew says. While
far from what is traditionally considered a true Wagnerian
Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, the ScentOpera is sure
to investigate the effectiveness of interdisciplinary aesthetic
experiences. The synesthetic character of the work, whose title “Green
Aria” hints that smell and color and sound are all going to be
associated with one another to create heightened super-sense,
complicates this experiment.
Many believe that perfumery will translate well into a fine-art setting, but most of these people are commercial perfumers. Matthew
is judicious on this topic, acknowledging, “a lot of people are going
to find this fascinating, a lot of people will call this crazy
nonsense.”
Scent works seem to be in the air this season. In addition to the ScentOpera, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s aromatic anthropodino installation is an exercise in smell-incorporating architecture that just opened at the Park Avenue Armory. Matthew
is the first to admit, “We’re not original, or the first people to try
something like this.” This is certainly true, and brings back woeful
memories of illfated projects like John Water’s “Odorama” scratch ‘n’
sniff cards intended to augment films, the grand 1960s failure of
Smell-o-Vision film technology and, most recently, the introduction of
a peripheral USB computer device called the iSmell, named one of the
“25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” by PC World magazine.
“A
lot of people get pilloried for attempting things with scent, mostly
because there’s been such awful technology,” Matthew notes. According
to Matthew and Laudamiel, Aeosphere has perfected this technology,
which will set them apart from their comically lackluster antecedents.
The
fusion of art and science is also reflected in “Green Aria,” whose
concerns center around the relationship between industry and humanity
and, more directly, nature and technology. Surely these concerns are
somewhat conflicted for two figures whose careers pivot around artistic
and technological concerns.
If this new technology is indeed
perfected, it will unleash all kinds of new possibilities for achieving
virtuality.While not explicit about their intentions, it is clear that
Matthew and Laudamiel mean to adapt this technology for commercial
entertainment, not just for the art world, which could make a skeptic
wonder if the ScentOpera is not an elaborate PR stunt designed to entice investors.
Obviously,
Matthew and his partner have a passion for the new and experimental,
even if they haven’t quite figured out why new equals progress, or if new amounts to progress. But their vision is a work in progress, and as such seems promising. The
elemental, ethereal presence of “Green Aria” will, at its best,
establish a connection with the audience that is emotional and
thrilling. At worst, it will give lots of people headaches.
> ScentOpera
May 31 and June 1, The Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave. (at E. 89th St.), www.worksandprocess.org; 7:30, $30
