Analog Lessons From Masters of the Senses

In which I interview professionals who design experiences that immerse people in ways web technologies aren't yet able to

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Thai taste machine tests authenticity

Now you guys know we love a good robot as much as anyone, but some things are maybe best left to the humans.

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This is happening Friday. "Enhance flavour by plating" "History of and writing about perfume" "Fragrant memories" "Digital taste and smell" "How our expectations time our perception of flavour" "The perfect meal" I say yes. HT Ben

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You don’t need a degree in engineering to design roller coasters, you need a degree in psychology,” said John Allen, a celebrated coaster designer. “A roller coaster is as theatrically conceived as a Broadway play.”

from The thrill engineers | Focus Magazine | Science and Technology, 2009. Features research from University of Nottingham (cf Steve Benford, School of Computer Science)

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Disney Command Center Aims to Keep Lines Moving, from The New York Times (27 Dec 2010) Must. Go. To. Disney. Operational. Command. Centre.

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Following a series of deaths, injuries and bad press during its run from 1978 to 1996, the park was sold to a large resort chain in the mid-1990s and was rebranded by its new owners as Mountain Creek. But now the action is back, and the Vernon, New Jersey-based park is once again operating under its original owners and name.

The World's Most Dangerous Amusement Park Opens Its Gates Again Hmm... So much for my posit that amusement parks are the safest places on Earth...

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Landscapes of Theme Park Rides: Media, Modes, Messages

A chapter by Brenda J. Brown in the 2002 book, Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations, edited by Terence Young and Robert Riley. Some really beautiful images from old parks and fairs, plus a history of rides. Hits topics like landscape, movement, sound and story, simulation, rhythmic motion.. More academic than Venturi's Browns and Izenour'sLearning from Las Vegas, which is a more practical handbook about how to design an architecture of desire, but good on theory and cultural analyses.

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The march towards integrating complex physiological sensation into digital devices continues. Here, a technology that "turns touch screens into Feel Screens." "With Senseg touch screens come alive with textures and edges that users can feel. Using Senseg technology, makers of tablet computers, smart phones, and any touch interface device can deliver revolutionary user experiences with high fidelity tactile sensations. Your customers will Feel the Difference with Senseg." More>. HT Wired UK from April 2013.

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The Dictionary of Untranslatables

Listening this morning to the latest New Yorker Out Loud podcast, I discovered another delightful avenue of things lost in translation: language. It's perhaps unsurprising that translators feel that there is a certain je ne sais quois about their art, and have been vocal about the threat they feel of digital services like Google Translate. But in the podcast today, I discovered The Dictionary of Untanslatables, the English iteration of the original French encyclopedia of concepts that have particular meanings in one tongue that can't quite be summed up in another.

From Princeton University Press: 

This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

One for the bookshelf, for sure.

Cassin, B., Apter, E., Lezra, J., & Wood, M. (2014). Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Princeton University Press.

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Time is not a fixed construct, says Cathy Haynes, artist, curator and (at the time of this video) timekeeper in residence at the UCL Petrie Museum of Ancient Egyptian objects. Our sense of time has an impact on how we view the world and our current obsession with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and so on affects the experience of living.

This is a very short excerpt from a much longer conversation I had with Cathy, but in it she explodes the idea that time is perpetual, and poses a challenge to digital innovators for how to create patinas on technologically recorded objects that give them a greater value.

For more from Cathy, listen to the first episode of the fifth series of BBC Radio 4's Digital Human (Time), and you can follow her timekeeping research at astormisblowing.org.

For even more, listen to this interview she did with me and Ben Hammersley about how Facebook's timeline shapes identity.

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HT John Wardley, whom I interviewed for the Analog Lessons project

Once upon a time, my best friend Alex said he wanted to become a roller coaster designer. That piqued my interest. I had no idea such a delightful thing was possible, that it could be done!

Alex - whom I’ll see for the first time in a decade later this week - didn’t become a roller coaster designer. I don’t hold it against him. But after listening to what John said in our interview, he’d’ve made a damn fine one.

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use your nose to get through the maze of mirrors. another inspired installation from jellymongers Bompas and Parr, this time at the RSC in Stratford.

From the B&P website:

The Waft that Woos is a mirror maze, navigable by nose and inspired by the Merry Wives of Windsor and Shakespearian comedy. Follow the scent of the only aphrodisiac known to mankind (which is absorbed via your lungs and eyeballs) to the heart of the maze.

Bompas & Parr’s installation is geared to give visitors a tangible Shakespearian experience, exploding narratives, characterisation and criticism to an architectural and inhabitable scale. Come explore the maze and sniff the Shakespearean love oil our atmospheric aphrodisiac.

The maze develops and expands the visual trickery found in The Merry Wives of Windsor to an explorable narrative environment. As with the best Shakespearian comedies increasing confusion is resolved in the delights of the wedding bower.

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a description of the forthcoming “newest public amusement”, A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes, from 14 September 1902, in the New York Times.

All lovers of good smells are expected to patronize the convert, which will be given by Mr. Sadakachi Hartmann, an aesthete and odorist, or smell expert of no mean standing. This olfactory enthusiast will in a way feed the various smells into his machine, and by a series of stops and vales, vert much after the manner of an automatic piano player, will, he says, play upon the senses of his audience much as a great musician sways the listeners with tonal melodies.”

also, delightfully,

The smell soloist may strike the low C by diffusing a strong smell of patchouli, then the high F with a piercing note of burning horsehair.” A female Japanese dancer and “soft Japanese airs” accompany the recital to aid the public in their appreciation of this olfactory concert.

HT @artandolfaction

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Now an entirely new organ has been developed, which …translates music into corresponding odors

The Dead media Project:Working Notes: 06.9 (via thatsinteres)

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most odor-cued memories were located to the first decade of life

Willander, J. & Larsson, M. (2006). Smell your way back to childhood: Autobiograhical odor memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Vol13(2): 240-244.

abstract only:

This study addressed age distributions and experiential qualities of autobiographical memories evoked by different sensory cues. Ninety-three older adults were presented with one of three cue types (word, picture, or odor) and were asked to relate any autobiographical event for the given cue. The main aims were to explore whether (1) the age distribution of olfactory-evoked memories differs from memories cued by words and pictures and (2) the experiential qualities of the evoked memories vary over the different cues. The results showed that autobiographical memories triggered by olfactory information were older than memories associated with verbal and visual information. Specifically, most odor-cued memories were located to the first decade of life (<10 years), whereas memories associated with verbal and visual cues peaked in early adulthood (11–20 years). Also, odor-evoked memories were associated with stronger feelings of being brought back in time and had been thought of less often than memories evoked by verbal and visual information. This pattern of findings suggests that odor-evoked memories may be different from other memory experiences. nt|mis|This work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council

(via thatsinteres)

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[The Anti-Camera] coerces our mind into recollecting the essence of a moment – something less tangible than an image can capture.

An interesting idea: 

The device is designed to tag a moment in time with a unique olfactory identifier code – a bespoke smell. Then, when wishing to recall the moment at their leisure, the user of such a device could recreate the unique smell.

from Pan Proposition: The Anti-Camera

(via thatsinteres)

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Scientists from the University of Nottingham recently turned the Alton Towers amusement park, in Staffordshire, into an open-air lab. They rigged up over 100 volunteers with equipment that measured everything from their heart rate to the minute muscle movements in their faces as they rode on the park’s rides. The data produced is now being sifted to uncover what riders really do, or don’t, enjoy. 

also:

the illusion of danger is vital

From Focus Magazine. By Andy Ridgway. No publication date.

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there’s a lovely section here about the relationship between smells & maps. Here Nicola Twilly describes the theory behind her installation, Scratch N’ Sniff NYC:

Scratch ‘N Sniff NYC consists of two maps, twelve smells, thousands of scratch ‘n sniff stickers and a variable number of linguistic descriptors. A “majority preference” map on the left-hand side extrapolates from Vosshall’s “olfactory demography” to show the dominant odour perception framework in each neighbourhood. Next to it on the right, a crowd-sourced “personal favourite” map will ask each exhibition visitor to position their own smell biases and understanding within the city. It’s hardly a scientific study, but I can’t wait to see the different patterns that emerge over the course of the exhibition.

With links to the Smell Lab at Rockefeller University.

HT @kthread