Wake Up And Smell The Coffee: Google Nose Beta Already Exists

Just over a week ago, Google released their April Fools’ joke, Google Nose Beta, a search tool that detects and emits scent with a simple click. Although clearly a parody (“What does a ghost smell like?”) Google Nose Beta was a successful prank because, at first glance, people fell for it. These days, it is not silly to believe that technology can finally incorporate the sensory "holy grail": nasal data. And there have certainly been many efforts to do so. We take a look at some of them below:

THE SMELLING SCREEN:

Photo courtesy of IEEE Virtual Reality Conference

A design team from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology revealed this odoriferous monitor at the IEEE Virtual Reality conference last month. The concept is simple: a television monitor framed with four fans, each pumping odors in a precise direction. The odors are generated using hydrogel chips that vaporize when heated. "The user can freely move his/her head to sniff at various locations on the screen, and can experience realistic changes in the odor intensity with respect to the sniffing location," reads the project description on the IEEE website. Although smelly TVs are still a bit experimental for the modern household, inventor Haruka Matsukura plans to introduce this technology to the world of marketing. Seeing as our olfactory sense stimulates memory, advertisements may soon have the power to transport you to a childhood picnic, your wedding, or your mother’s kitchen during an Olive Garden commercial. Good luck resisting the lobster ravioli.

SMELLIT:

Photos courtesy of NT Design Studio

In an attempt to domesticate smell-generators, NT Design Studio developed this sleek concept with a common printer in mind. The project first appeared on Behance in 2008 and the studio released their finished product in 2011. Using ‘smell’ cartridges, SMELLIT reads the ‘scent’ information coded onto DVDs. "After decoding the smell information, the cartridge vaporizes a very small amount of concentrated ‘smell gel’, and the central fan distributes equally the smell in all directions. It can be loaded with 118 cartridges, each one with a different concentrated ‘smell gel,’" the design team explains. With this addition, any entertainment system can offer a multisensory experience.

SMELL x ILLUSION:

Photo courtesy of Ueda Maki

Netherlands-based artist, Ueda Maki, explored the medieval city of Dordrecht using smell as her medium. Maki lead tourists through the city on a boat and, using a series of air tanks and sprays, released the aroma of French fries, lavender, and seaweed. “The scents were sometimes ‘matching’ to the environment, but sometimes not, to create a nice surprise," Maki writes in her blog. SMELLxILLUSION made the experience of surroundings a primarily nasal one, ultimately turning “sightseeing” on its head.

TERRENCE MALICK'S THE NEW WORLD:

Photo courtesy of Filmsufi.com

The introduction of smell in film (1906) predates the introduction of talkies in the 1920s. Since then, smell has been reduced to a gimmick—and a pesky one, at that: when sprayed into a theater, odors lingered for too long and some fragrances reached spectators long after the corresponding scene was over. In 1982, scratch-n-sniff cards were incorporated in the film Polyester as a cheap alternative to sprays. Still, it wasn’t until 2006 that NTT Communications, the Japanese telecommunications company, developed a web system that linked scenes from Terrence Malicks The New World to fragrance downloads. “Each [aroma-emitting] device contains six base oils, which are combined according to the recipes for specifically generated aromas,” explains the NTT press release. With the added dimension of smell, Malick’s rendition of Captain John Smith’s romance with Pocahontas became an evocative one. Love scenes were set to floral aromas and fight scenes smelled distinctly of grass and dirt.

Although a comprehensive database of "high-resolution" fragrances may be a huge undertaking—even for Google—you can still warm to the idea of Google Nose Beta as an attainable reality, and not just an annual spoof.

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