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Smells can evoke strong emotional responses.
A scent associated with a good experience can bring a rush of joy.
A foul odour or one associated with a bad memory may make us grimace
with disgust. (Classen et al, 1995, p. 2).
The human sense of smell, linked to the cognitive centers in the
brain is a powerful evocation of memory: ‘Smell may be to emotion
what sight or hearing is to cognition’ (Engen, 1991, p. 3 ).
In Smell: the Secret Seducer, Peit Vroom writes that there are reasons
to assume that a child’s first sensation is in the sphere of
smell: ‘We begin our life, as it were, not by seeing the light
of day, but by smelling a kind of ‘Life smell’ diffused
in the fluid of the womb’ (1997, p. 21). He goes on to describe
how the sense of smell can function as a kind of ‘starter motor’ that
evokes all kinds of apparently forgotten experiences and events from
the past, even though sometimes one cannot name or describe the smell
concerned more precisely. (Vroon,1997, p. 103). In terms of the technology/performance
relationship, smell is as yet unique to the live presence/performance
/audience dynamic. Technology has not found a meaningful way to (re)create
smell. It is the emotive impact of smell that we have been most interested
in exploring particularly with respect to its impact when used in
live performance. ‘The perception of smell, thus consists not
only of the sensation of the odours themselves, but of the experiences
and emotions associated with them’ (Classen et al, 1995,
p. 2). Smells can be highly evocative, conjuring up the vivid memory
of associated events and places, even from remote childhood.
In The Foul and The Fragrant, Alain Corbin states that, ‘As
the sense of affective behaviour and its secrets…the sense
of smell was viewed as capable of shaking man’s inner life
more profoundly than were the senses of hearing or of sight’ (1994,
p. 8). The Desana peoples of the Amazonian rainforest of Colombia
believe that smells are apprehended by the whole body, not simply
the nose. Piet Vroon writes that:
When people are asked what sense they would be prepared to
do without if necessary, smell comes at the top of the list and
sight at the
bottom. This is a debatable choice, given that smell plays a significant
part in many psychic processes and behaviors patterns. Smell is essential
for the operation of the sense of taste; it affects one’s sex
life, motivation and memory processes (including learning, health
and feelings of security and well-being); and it has an alarm function
in life-threatening situations (Vroon,1997, p. 4).
Another reason
we have been interested in working with smell is that both performance
and smell reflect an intangibility, an ungraspability
which defines their very nature. The ‘unpindownable’,
elusive nature of performance is similar to the indescribable nature
of smell. In Aroma, The Cultural History of Smell, the authors state
that odours cannot be recorded, ‘There is no effective way
of either capturing scents or storing them over time. In the realm
of olfaction, we must make do with descriptions and recollections’ (1995,
p. 3). Just as live performance cannot be captured and reproduced
without the documentation changing it, so smell and the memories
it evokes are of the moment. Smells can, however, be remembered long
after the initial sensation has been experienced. Like performance,
smell can live on in the memory, unlocking a personal history, occupying ‘les
lieux de mémoire.’
Our terminology for describing smells is generally meagre or
inadequate, due to our neural architecture. The parts of the brain
that are closely
involved in the use of language have few direct links with the olfactory
system. Because consciousness and the use of language are closely
connected, it is understandable why olfactory information plays a
part mainly on an unconscious level (Vroon,1997, pp. 110-111).
In
Aroma, The Cultural History of Smell, Classen et al. include at the
end a section which is entitled, ‘Smell: The Postmodern
Sense?’ Therein they write: In our postmodern world smell is
often a notable …absence. Odours are suppressed in public places,
there are no smells on television, the world of computers is odour
free, and so on. This olfactory ‘silence’ notwithstanding,
smell would see to share many of the traits commonly attributed to
postmodernity….The past irrelevant, the future uncertain, postmodernity
is a culture of ‘now’, a pastiche of styles and genres
which exists in an eternal resent. Postmodernity is also a culture
of imitations and simulations, where copies predominate over originals
and images over substance… Will smell, seduced by an endless
procession of olfactory simulacra, succumb to its postmodern life,
or will it – ever elusive – transcend its postmodern
categorizations to remind us of our organic nature and even hint
at a realm of the spirit (Classen et al,1995, p. 203).
Olfactory Bibliography
Corbin, Alain, The Foul and The Fragrant; Odour and the Social
Imagination, (Picador: London), 1994.
Classen, Constance, Howes,
David & Synnott, Anthony, Aroma
: The Cultural History of Smell , (Routledge: London and New York),
1995.
Engen, Trygg, Odor Sensation and Memory, (Praeger Publishers),
1991.
Vroon, Piet, Smell: The Secret Seducer, Trans. Paul Vincent,
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York), 1997.
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