The whole society is made of up of humans and computers interacting with each other. That’s cyborg…

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But smell interfaces are no joke. Smell is a powerful contributor to our experience. Smell is what memories are made of. Think about how many times you have said, “This smell reminds me of…”

Well, there are many opportunities to incorporate the sense of smell into media. Here are a few modern and historic attempts. I am just not sure they could quite fit into a smartphone…yet.

Current Smell Interfaces

I was lucky to try the Meta Cookie from Japan. It is a smell and taste, augmented gustation interface that makes tasteless cookie into what ever you like. Well, eight flavors like chocolate, lemon, maple, or even cheese.

The cookie is stamped with a AR code that creates a cookie visual and smell is added when it nears your mouth. Did it work? Almost! The only problem was the burnt taste from branding/burning the code in the cookie. Who wants to eat a burnt cookie? That could be fixed by using dye or poppy-seeds? I am sure they are working on that.

If you don’t want a face helmet, how about  The Smelling Screen? It is a screen with scents that can waft from four locations. If the peach is low left corner of the screen, the smell can emit from there.

The history of smell media

In the 1960s, movie entertainment began adding more senses to create an olfactory, memorable experience.

Smell-o-vision (1960) paired with the movie, Scent Of Mystery. At specific scenes, 30 different scents were pumped out to each seat in the theatre. The experience was not seamless, as the audience complained that the smells were too loud. The fragrances hissed into their ears, and disrupted the movie.

SENSORAMA (1962) was created by Morton Heilig as “Experience Theater.”  This was a personal multi-sensory theater with wind, vibration, sound, and smell.  This was a grandparent of virtual reality. We are not sure why these did not populate the cities. Apparently, the inventor was not able to get financial backing to develop, but the prototypes still work today!

So, there you have it. Smell media is no joke. From the 1960s motion pictures to current day in Japan, we are intrigued with enhancing our media experience with the sense of smell.

“welcome to the world of nature fiction.”

Drôle de création que les Natura Pathos de Kristin Neidlinger. photo by Dan Brazelton

The HeartSync corsets .

Kristin gave an introduction to our mood technologies. Then, the performance began, a future of intimate media.

 Heart media.

SENSOREE therapeutic bio.media appeared at Wisdom 2.0 - a conference defining how to proceed with awareness in the digital age. SENSOREE showcase/ wearable mood technologies on circus artists.

Saturday, Feb 23rd at 8pm.

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SENSOREEs Primal Tech -0.1 pau de deux fashion line. Each artifact from this collection is home-aid and custom-aid, from silicon molded body suits to tailor fit, tyvek corsets. The garments are embedded with SENSOREE bio.media, wearable computers with sensoree technology that read and communicate the body’s inner state.

Pau de deux means dance of the duet. All the designs come in a pair and exhibit new forms of communication, with another person or the spacial environment, near or far. 

We are very excited to be collaborating with circus artists for the design process and circuit modeling. QuantumSound suits were custom-aid for contortionists. With 11 sensors, they create sound as they bend.

ChrysalisBoom is a collapsible cocoon with illuminated fabric that sequences and displays tweets.

CyberFur - movement illuminated fur also has a heart cam.

The HeartSync corsets communicate heart rate and display mood.

Please enjoy the intimate spectacle !

Primal Tech premiered at the Crucible’s Hot Couture show in January 2013.

Photos by Gil Riego Jr.

Primal Tech -0.1 premier

We are very excited to be collaborating with circus artists for the design process. They will be circuit modeling and performing in their custom designs on the runway.

HeartSync photo by Stephen Lam from the SF Chronicle

For 2013, we are focusing on duets. All the designs come in a pair and exhibit new forms of communication, with another person or the spacial environment, near or far. Our first duet is global and local participation.

ChrysalisBoom TweetCocoon is our global design . Tweets from the cyber world are displayed on LED matrix panels. Her exo-skeleton cocoon is expandable and collapsible to expose the tweets or diffuse them.

CyberFur is motion sensitive luminescent fur. The more she moves, the more she glows. She also wears a GoPro body mounted camera on her solar plexus to document the view from the runway. The local audience is now on stage with us.

Our second duet maps sounds from the body into the space. QuantumSound are two particle-wave suits that display sounds in space. Made in collaboration with contortionists, these suits are custom molded silicon, embedded with flexible sensors at their joints. As they move, a wireless sound scape is created. A healing sound artist created the tones, so the sounds also help with alignment of the body mind.

Our final duet is a pair of heart communicators. The HeartSync corsets have heart sensors that read and display each others heart beats. Their own heart rate is illuminated on their chest, and in close proximity it picks up the others heart rate around the collar.

The Crucible is bringing back Hot Couture: A Fusion of Fashion and Fire to celebrate our 14th year anniversary. Hot Couture’s fashion show will display creations from fashion designers collaborating and producing industrial fashions in partnership with artists. Hot Couture will integrate bold design, visionary fashion, and accessories. Hot couture will consist of wearable art that will be unveiled during our two night, annual anniversary event, January 11 & 12, 2013. Thirteen artist and designer teams will create as many as forty-eight haute couture concepts, illustrating the intersection between fashion, traditional industrial materials, and fabrication.

The Decelerator Helmet is a experimental approach for dealing with our fast moving society. The sense of vision is consigned to an apparatus which allows the user a perception of the world in slow motion.

The Decelerator Helmet – A slow motion for Real Life from Lorenz Potthast on Vimeo.

Der Entschleunigerhelm – Zeitlupe fürs echte Leben, as it is named in German, was created at University of Art in Bremen, Germany (hfk-bremen.de/).

In a increasingly hectic, overstimulated and restless environment are the calls for deceleration omnipresent. The inconceivably amount of information and influences in our everyday lives leads in many cases to an excessive demand.The idea to decouple the personal perception from the natural timing enables the user to become aware of his own time.

In the inside of the helmet the video-signal of a camera is processed by a small computer. The slowed-down images are displayed right before the user’s eyes via a head-mounted display and are simultaneously shown on a monitor on the outside.
The helmet has three different modes which can be selected by a remote control:
In the auto-mode time is slowed down automatically and re-accelerated after a defined interval. The press-mode allows the specific deceleration of time. In the scroll-mode the user can completely control the speed of the elapsing of time.

The Decelerator gives the user the possibility to reflect about the flow of time in general and about the relation between sensory perception, environment and corporality in particular. Also it dramatically visualizes how slowing down can potentially cause a loss of the present.

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We are living the past’s future dreams

~ SUPERPOSITION, the premiere exhibition at So Weit, die Zukunft [SWDZ], in Vienna, Austria, evokes past ideas of future now.

In her SENSOREE Mood Sweater, Kristin Neidlinger was excited - red -  to be there for a Future Fashion performance.

This new gallery is the sister gallery of So Far,The Future in the UK, that has opened for Vienna Design Week 2012.

For a Future Fashion how to, we taught a workshop. Here is our new Sew a Circuit | Touch Sensor kit.

The best part about Austria? Cake is always on the table!

Thank you, Andreas Pohancenik! SWDZ.

We are honored to be featured on the cover of the catalog and surprised by the billboards!

Fantastique !

Photos from the exhibit here.