Colin
09-16-2001, 11:09 AM
well...not quite... however, take a look at this article I found at Yahoo! today....
Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You - Smells!
By Michael Shields
ZURICH (Reuters) - Imagine sitting in a darkened cinema watching a vampire emerge from his musty tomb and approach his helpless victim, whose forehead is bathed with beads of perspiration.
Soon the smell of sweat invading your nostrils may not be coming from your own armpits, but from tiny dispensers built into the armrests of your seat.
Technological advances in creating scents and aromas on demand are about to create a brave new world of smells that could change the way we experience films and plays, drive our cars or even walk into our living rooms after a hard day's work.
Georg Frater, head of fragrance research at Swiss flavors and fragrances group Givaudan, said in a recent interview the company had already started experimenting on how best to use people's sense of smell to heighten the movie-going experience.
``They wouldn't scent every scene because then you are disturbed. It is too much for you. But perhaps every five or 10 minutes you have a new scent that just suits the scene. This is the idea,'' he told Reuters.
Givaudan -- second only to U.S.-based International Flavors and Fragrances Inc in the business of adding taste and smells to food, drinks and consumer products -- already has the technology to deliver any smell a director could dream up.
``It can be the green smell of the jungle. It can be a typical swamp odor. It can be sweat when someone is climbing mountains. When you have a beautiful lady you could have a beautiful floral fragrance. The possibilities are amazing,'' Frater said.
The driving force behind the idea is commerce rather than art. Experiments Givaudan conducted in Germany recently centered on the smell of a soft drink.
``It was actually Fanta, this orange drink. There was a Fanta advertisement on the screen and suddenly the Fanta odor came out of the chair. It is really amazing. You salivate. It is really impressive stuff,'' Frater gushed.
CUT TO NEW SMELL
Critics question how cinemas will rid themselves quickly of smells pouring out of 300 seats once a scene changes.
``You have to get rid of the odors in minutes. This is possible. One of the tricks is to do it with helium, which is lighter than air so it goes up and the air circulation takes care of it. Then you can start again from below,'' Frater said.
The company's virtual aroma synthesizer works like a color printer, which mixes inks to produce the desired colors on paper, except that in this case, it would mix chemicals to produce the smell of lavender, rainy woods, fresh-cut grass or a wet dog.
The same technology could change the smell that awaits you at home. All you would have to do is buy interchangeable cartridges to plug into your smell machine at home and generate virtually unlimited numbers of smells.
``One scenario would be that you buy the cartridges when you tank up your car. Today you can buy chocolate -- which is not good for you -- and choose from 20 or 30 different chocolates in a gas station. You could have 20 different cartridges for odors. you just plug them in and start again,'' Frater said.
The technology allows for an even higher degree of sophistication, he said.
``You can call home and tell your device what kind of odor you would like to have when you come home at 8 o'clock at night dead tired.''
There are applications for the automotive industry as well. Frater noted that one big carmaker had taken out a patent for a system that would detect if tired drivers start blinking more often and then trigger the release of invigorating perfume.
The next step could be creating unique smells that carmakers would use as a part of their corporate image. One huge carmaker has already approached Givaudan about the idea.
``You can have a corporate smell, why not,'' he said, although the jury is out on whether this could be patented because fragrances do not normally get patent protection.
Givaudan researchers float in balloons above the rainforest to gather new aromas and have won several Fifis -- the fragrance world's Oscars (news - web sites) -- for scenting many high-profile perfumes.
``We consider nature as our big teacher because nature had time for several million years to devise everything. We copy the secrets we get out of nature and we reconstitute them in a manageable away,'' he said.
Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You - Smells!
By Michael Shields
ZURICH (Reuters) - Imagine sitting in a darkened cinema watching a vampire emerge from his musty tomb and approach his helpless victim, whose forehead is bathed with beads of perspiration.
Soon the smell of sweat invading your nostrils may not be coming from your own armpits, but from tiny dispensers built into the armrests of your seat.
Technological advances in creating scents and aromas on demand are about to create a brave new world of smells that could change the way we experience films and plays, drive our cars or even walk into our living rooms after a hard day's work.
Georg Frater, head of fragrance research at Swiss flavors and fragrances group Givaudan, said in a recent interview the company had already started experimenting on how best to use people's sense of smell to heighten the movie-going experience.
``They wouldn't scent every scene because then you are disturbed. It is too much for you. But perhaps every five or 10 minutes you have a new scent that just suits the scene. This is the idea,'' he told Reuters.
Givaudan -- second only to U.S.-based International Flavors and Fragrances Inc in the business of adding taste and smells to food, drinks and consumer products -- already has the technology to deliver any smell a director could dream up.
``It can be the green smell of the jungle. It can be a typical swamp odor. It can be sweat when someone is climbing mountains. When you have a beautiful lady you could have a beautiful floral fragrance. The possibilities are amazing,'' Frater said.
The driving force behind the idea is commerce rather than art. Experiments Givaudan conducted in Germany recently centered on the smell of a soft drink.
``It was actually Fanta, this orange drink. There was a Fanta advertisement on the screen and suddenly the Fanta odor came out of the chair. It is really amazing. You salivate. It is really impressive stuff,'' Frater gushed.
CUT TO NEW SMELL
Critics question how cinemas will rid themselves quickly of smells pouring out of 300 seats once a scene changes.
``You have to get rid of the odors in minutes. This is possible. One of the tricks is to do it with helium, which is lighter than air so it goes up and the air circulation takes care of it. Then you can start again from below,'' Frater said.
The company's virtual aroma synthesizer works like a color printer, which mixes inks to produce the desired colors on paper, except that in this case, it would mix chemicals to produce the smell of lavender, rainy woods, fresh-cut grass or a wet dog.
The same technology could change the smell that awaits you at home. All you would have to do is buy interchangeable cartridges to plug into your smell machine at home and generate virtually unlimited numbers of smells.
``One scenario would be that you buy the cartridges when you tank up your car. Today you can buy chocolate -- which is not good for you -- and choose from 20 or 30 different chocolates in a gas station. You could have 20 different cartridges for odors. you just plug them in and start again,'' Frater said.
The technology allows for an even higher degree of sophistication, he said.
``You can call home and tell your device what kind of odor you would like to have when you come home at 8 o'clock at night dead tired.''
There are applications for the automotive industry as well. Frater noted that one big carmaker had taken out a patent for a system that would detect if tired drivers start blinking more often and then trigger the release of invigorating perfume.
The next step could be creating unique smells that carmakers would use as a part of their corporate image. One huge carmaker has already approached Givaudan about the idea.
``You can have a corporate smell, why not,'' he said, although the jury is out on whether this could be patented because fragrances do not normally get patent protection.
Givaudan researchers float in balloons above the rainforest to gather new aromas and have won several Fifis -- the fragrance world's Oscars (news - web sites) -- for scenting many high-profile perfumes.
``We consider nature as our big teacher because nature had time for several million years to devise everything. We copy the secrets we get out of nature and we reconstitute them in a manageable away,'' he said.