How I Became a Perfumer Podcast

№2 – Curating Scents with Sofia Collette Ehrich

• Neparfumer • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Join us for a fascinating dive into the world of olfactory art with an art historian, academic researcher, and Odeuropa project curator Sofia Colette Ehrich. We explore the captivating 'Nosetalgia' edition of Kunstlicht magazine and discuss the challenges of incorporating scent in museums. Get ready for an insightful conversation!

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Another thing I wanted to tell you is that you're gonna have blitz questions. Blitz. Blitz questions. What does that mean? The guest for today's episode is Sofia Collette Ehrich. By the way, I'm very surprised the way it is pronounced. uh So, Sofia Collette Ehrich is an art historian, academic researcher, podcast host, and curator of multi-sensory experiences. She currently works, and it's her main work at this point, with the European-funded project Odor Your... Odeuropa! damn it. So currently her main work is the European funded project Odeuropa, which advocates for smells and smelling as important to European cultural heritage. So thank you, Sofia, for coming here and welcome. Yes, and you'd be surprised. Odeuropa is difficult to pronounce for some people, so... And sometimes even to write. I just think which letter should I omit? Or should I write Odeuropa? Odeuropa? And I noticed that it's... Odeuropa. Yeah, I think for an English tongue it's okay, but it can become a tongue twister sometimes. If I were a recruiter for this project, would just have people ask them, if you pronounced it right, were offered a job there. Any description is very limiting. And when I introduce guests, feel very strange doing so, people are definitely not labels and not professional labels either. And for me, Sophie is just a very bright personality, which I met in The Hague. Probably one of the... weird weirdest things which happened like that we are both living actually in The Hague which like might not have any sense for people who knew me from my previous life and maybe for those who know Sofia as well why like why The Hague? Before that like little Sofia how did you even get to the studies you made like art historian who is that and how people like were you like born in a family which does arts or like how did you even find out that this profession exists? well, art historian and professional in smell, culture, or whatever you want to uh put it. My influence on a smell perspective and art perspective, I guess you could say both, is from my mother, actually. I was struggling in... uh community college in Santa Monica, was struggling to find a path of what I wanted to study. And one day, because I had many interests, I was interested in entertainment, I was interested in uh art, I always loved museums, my mom always took me to museums and encouraged uh cultural heritage. so that was always a nice activity for me and also with my mom. And so I was struggling to decide what I wanted to do because at some point I had to choose uh major. And so she pulled out this big textbook from her closet. It's called Art Through the Ages. And it was her textbook from when she took art history. She's an accountant, so she has nothing to do with art, although she's very creative. And so she handed me this book and she said, you know, art history one was my favorite class that I in college. So maybe you really like art, maybe this is a good path for you. So I remember flipping through this book and I said, yeah, you know, that might be a good idea. And so that was my choice. So I took art history courses at Santa Monica College and then I uh applied to go for art history major at UCLA. And so that was kind of the art history path for me. But connected to the smell, I guess you could say unintentionally because I never really thought, okay, Who really thinks when they wake up, I don't know, when they're young, when I grow up I want to be a smell researcher. I don't know that that's... No. I don't think that's happening. no, no, like it's either perfumers because like they the kids of the perfumers or etc. But not like smelled art research like art research is already too much. Yeah Yeah, is, this is, yeah, this doesn't, I don't think this happened. But I was always connected to, of course, connected to sense. I think we all are, right? Um, and so my mom has, my mom was into, really into aromatherapy in the early nineties and thought about even going, um, to classes and learning about it professional, professionally. She does have a massage therapist license, so she's very into this kind of health and wellness and smells. And so when she was pregnant with me, in order to prevent her from getting uh stretch marks on her belly, she always rubbed lavender oil on her stomach when I was inside. And so this, think, is why I love lavender. So I brought lavender with me for you to smell because it's very calming. So it's actually a good way to start an interview. Um, should have smelled it like. And then breathwork and then we won't forget about the interview. should have been like diffusing it into the roomwork. a good idea, the way. A very good quality one, I suppose. I've heard your interview with them. It was a huge opening for me. mean, very interesting interview and very interesting institute as well. I now subscribe to their newslets and read some stuff, which is very... a good blog and their classes are very nice. I'm interested since this one is very different than many lavender oils I've smelled before. uh It's very diffusive to some extent. You feel lot of sweet notes since I believe our listeners won't be able to do that. But like right now, not yet. Though in some of your interviews uh for the podcast it seems like it's doable. at some point to start smiling together with the guys you are listening to or playing games with or anything else. yeah, a very good quality one, I'm actually good. So Lavenda, well, in your mom's stomach. And now you're the calmest person ever. Well, kind of a joke in my family is that people say, I mean, I'm not always calm, of course, but that's one reason why I'm kind of like a calm personality most of the time, that she kind of conditioned me with this lavender on her stomach. So lavender has also always been one of my favorite scents. um And usually the one I say if someone asks, because that's a common question also, like, what's your favorite scent? I believe I also have it somewhere, but right now we know the answer. uh But yeah, really, of course I have other scents that I really like, but that's, I think that's my number one. And then the story with your mom just bringing you a book. She seems to have solutions to every problem. I think most moms do, right? And then at some point in your life, you look back at all the things your mom has said, and you're like, yeah. That's right, that was right a long time ago. I should have listened. So yeah, my mom has a lot of good advice, and that was one of them. But did she also recommended you, like, your studies going further to Europe to continue those? So my mom was also a big advocate of continuing and on to do a master's. So my master's program doesn't have much to do with art history. My master's is in media studies because I am also very interested in media and technology. so that's another interest of mine. And when I did my master's, I had already been exposed to some multi-sensory classes and so my entire master's study was dedicated to figuring out how to bring smell into digital landscapes because this is something that is not so common. So I mean we have olfactory virtual reality now and there's some people experimenting but it's still very uncommon. I think especially since cinema is a very traditional medium. So it's hard for people to imagine cinema with smell. But I think VR has good potential for it. I would agree. When you've been talking about that, I remember one of the VR experiences, which I suppose if you or someone else were able to give recommendation to those who developed it, to use also the scent, would be fantastic, since ah it was something uncommon for me, I know about your VR experiences, but in the end, when you go, it was like the end of game and you find yourself in a tropic forest. Like you find yourself in a tropical forest on a mountain. So like, happens there. The thing was that they use the fence. So you use, you feel like it's a wind and it's already something. They use some system for like making a sort of, some shower rain, but like a very, not something we had this night. Uh, but like just uh a rain, which like shows you that you are technically there. And imagining having, of course you have a sound, of course you have a visual. So technically you already feel it, but like the smell dimension was missing, the olfactory dimension wasn't there. And as you were saying, like the VR experiences, they do might to benefit from that. Yeah. Yeah, and of course, Aaron Wysniewski from OVR Technology, he has started this. I really want to try it one day. I haven't been able to try it. But I think something he has uh down amazingly, which is, I think, the biggest challenge, is the changing of smells inside the system. And that, I think, is the biggest challenge, because that was also the challenge with aroma. You when they tried to use the smell, yes. People don't expect some smells to be in the cinema at all. uh they had issues with the smells being too synthetic or the smells not going away. So they're in the air and then they don't dissipate properly, which I think is one of the most difficult challenges that you face when you're scents as a medium. yeah, I think that's something he has done pretty well and I'm very curious to try it out because... Like the changing of smells in environments is difficult. And then also having a good quality one that persuades people that they're in the place that they think they are. I think it's all of that balance of things. I agree, I agree. And also, since you already started talking about challenges in the work of someone who does multi-sensor experiences, who wants to use smells in particular settings, well, maybe you could say a little bit, I know that you're jumping from one subject to another, but say a little bit if you have the same challenges in your work. Or maybe you have, like, as an art historian and also in multi-sensor experiences, or maybe you have some other challenges in your work. So right now my work focuses mainly on um bring sense to the museum setting or to heritage uh settings. And right now, myself and about six co-authors, I think we are, are working on uh an all factory storytelling toolkit for Oda Ropa and it's almost finished and will be released in November of this year. so we work the, this is a guide to help people, help museum professionals in particular, send to the museum and we call this olfactory storytelling and I wanted to define kind of define olfactory storytelling for you before we jump into the challenges because some people might be like what is olfactory storytelling that sounds crazy of course olfactory is the system uh is our sense of smell Storytelling, think everybody knows what storytelling is, but it's basically telling stories with smell. But what I wanted to say before I give a definition is that a lot of the time, like what you were just talking about, like 4D experiences, have where like 4D, what you see is what you smell. So like I see An apricot I need to smell. It should be apricot somewhere around. Yes, or like, you know, in the experience someone is toasting a bread and then you smell toast. So this is what Charles Spence calls pleonastic storytelling. So you kind of, you see what you smell and this is not what I'm referring to. So I wanna emphasize that's not what I'm referring to. for olfactory storytelling, this is really like the careful orchestration of scents or maybe the other senses as well, because you can use other senses to activate the visitor or the person who's experienced it in a meaningful way and that those senses are integral to your experience. So it's not like you said, okay, I designed the entire exhibition and now we add lavender because you want to. It's more that, okay, we have this idea to make an exhibition and then lavender is an integral component and this is why and this is how we will do it. So that's olfactory storytelling. So really that the send, it represents something meaningful and integral to the exhibition or to the media experience. If that's VR or AR or a theme park ride or a film. whatever that might be. So this really careful orchestration of the senses or of sense to create a meaningful experience for. easier. So it's not complimentary all the time. It's like not complimentary in the meaning that I would say your idea is that you have a toast as you've said since we're in the Netherlands we need to discuss toasts guys. So it's not the idea that you have toast and you need to be able to smell toast. It's like you see toast but like you're looking at it but then you have a smell which is probably a smell of I don't know patchouli but it's some Well, why I'm referring to Patchouli is that your one-up-be work, uh it's like a rather interesting one, uh that Patchouli should somehow complement it, but in a different way. So is that a very simplified idea or not? Yeah. or that if you were to present the toast It looks pretty cool. the sense, yeah, then you would, you would complement it somehow with a reason or with a story that makes it meaningful. So you could present a toast with the smell of toast. But I don't necessarily want that person who's experiencing it to just be like, I smell toast now. But there's kind of a meaning behind why you smell toast. Okay, the history of uh the Dutch, like to have a cold lunch. so bread, they actually wouldn't toast it. Bread is very important to that lunch or whatever that may be. there's kind of this like story or this arcane storyline, which I guess, I mean, filmmakers or directors, they would want this as well, right? So there's a visual. Why are you seeing that visual? What is the importance of that? not the muse. It's like the same as pairing music with a visual. You wouldn't have like a war scene with, I don't know, the Spice Girls playing necessarily. There's this like comparison or complementary aspect to the scene that has to make sense. So it's something like 1 plus 1 should give 3 instead of 1 plus 1 give 2. I think so. Right. So that should be some extra. Yeah, and not to say that pleonastic storytelling, uh as Charles Spence defines it, like duplicating what is seen uh is a bad thing. That works in certain settings, right? You just need to know your audience. perhaps like in a theme park ride or 4D, that might make sense. But in terms of like in museums and in terms of olfactory storytelling in the sense that uh Oda Ropa and my co-authors for this toolkit are going for is this kind of storytelling. Do you still want me to go into the challenges? Well, I would love to, because I believe many people right now thinking like, wow, why doesn't everyone use it? So they already know about art historians, they already know about art historians who work with smells. And now they think like, these people, they should be like everywhere. I should go to any museum setting and be able to be exposed to this experience. Where is that? Why is not here yet? So why? So, there are many challenges. I'm going to just give three, which I have found based on the research I've done within Oda Ropa and of course based on all the previous people who have used olfactory storytelling before me. So, the first challenge I'll mention is that we, and if you're talking about museums, you could say visitors, are very, ah have not encountered. smell in the museum most likely so far in their life. So we're not used to engaging with multi-sensory environments. It's just not in our blood. So we're used to sitting in a movie theater maybe, we're used to visuals, we're used to sound and visuals or audiovisual input, but we're not so used to having to smell something. In fact, that might make us uncomfortable in certain situations, right? It's not something that happens to you every night. You go, as you've said, watch Netflix or something. You have visual, you audio. That's it. Two dimensions involved. maybe you burn a candle at the same time, but then that's still like you're actively, you're in your home and you decided you're going to burn a candle. You're not in a communal space like a heritage setting or museum. um And so it can be. scary to smell something in a public space with other people because it can be considered an intimate experience. So that's the first one. It's challenging because we're not used to it. No, it's not sorry, but not many people used to even go into museum settings again in the Netherlands and in your Experience with your mom like thanks to her You've been exposed to that. here We have like museum cards and you could just go easily to all the museums like paying nothing for that and the museums Most of very high level but again, not everyone from those who listening are even interested in museums as well, it's already scary for them, like going somewhere and uncomfortable, might be not interesting, oh this modern art is just like a nonsense, I will not go there, and yeah, and you'll now see that, we will put you in extra, put an extra pressure. And I mean, partly the reason why some people might be intimidated by these faces is because they're only visual. So it could be, but... It's also an added layer that if you're not used to something, then it makes you worry or feel uncomfortable. yes, this is definitely a big challenge, which I think can only be solved by more people using olfactory storytelling in museums. The second one, the second and the third one is one that I really have been personally working on uh very hard to solve, which is Distribution and presentation of sense is difficult in space. um So we were just talking about ah that. ah I'm forgetting if it's aromarama or odorama. This is terrible. I should know this. the movie thing. I think it's an odorama, but it's not a big deal. mean, people successfully have forgotten about that because they didn't use it, they didn't like it. researchers like Jas Brooks and Simon Niedenthal are researching these kinds of methods so we have to remember them. I apologize for forgetting. So anyway, scents are fleeting, we know this, they dissipate. So when you spray them in the air, they tend to linger and spread. And this can make Yeah, this is an issue. um It's an issue if you want to use more than one sense at a time. So how to present sense within spaces, whether that's a museum space or going with a film, this can be very challenging. an extra layer of that is that it poses safety issues. So if you have sense, uh ambiently in the air. Some people who have a pre-existing condition of some sort might uh feel bad going into a space which smells so much of this particular scent. So you have to be very cautious and aware that not everybody wants to walk into a space that smells like roses or that smells like... Even like pre-existing memories of some extent. Or you mean... So it can be physical, like asthma, for example, even though, of course, it depends on the situation, but some people feel very aggravated by it. It depends on intensity and the type of smell, of course, but yeah, it's also in the air, right? So if you walk in, then some people might be worried about allergies. And then another uh challenge is what you just said that if someone walks into a room just because it smells good like roses doesn't mean that that person doesn't have a bad memory associated with roses and then you have you know someone having a certain type of reaction or moment in middle of a museum. uh So yeah, so within Odaropa, we've tried out a lot of different presentation or distribution techniques, like scratch and sniff cards or scented cards, blotters uh with like covers on them. And what else? You probably also have those small smelling, uh like, know, vials, which you could open and smell. Yeah, I've tried out glass jars lined with watercolor paper and that works very well. So there's a lot of different things or stations, smell stations. You can have glass bottles. Museum right now. Mondrian's, right? Yeah, so that kind of distribution method. So there's a lot of different options, especially with like more, it's not exactly dry diffusion because there's still VOCs coming out, but it is kind of this dry idea of dry diffusion that it's just scented air. So it's a little bit, it's safer for the artworks because that's an issue with distribution methods. You don't want wet particles of scent just like going on. walls or the artwork. So this is one of the biggest challenges of like the conservation departments. They don't want smells lingering in the space that might harm the artworks. So that's a big one. This one I have never thought about, yeah, not all the pictures have those like glass protection. It's definitely the challenge. So basically, come into the situation where, okay, it might be one plus one equals three, but at the same time, it might be one plus one equals zero or below zero since the whole experience might be ruined just because you added this not very safe from uh understanding perspective and sometimes from like physical perspective components to the exhibition. Yeah, and you might have the meaningful storytelling, you might have that all down and the presentation of that with the context of the send. You have everything down and then you distribute lavender, well, maybe lavender won't be such a problem, but you distribute lavender like 20 intensity and everybody walks in and they're like, this is awful because it's just too strong. So it's a delicate balance of these. things to kind of come together and that's yeah it makes the challenges even harder. Yeah, it's like an art plus art since like to some extent like Showcasing art is already a big thing But now you have to like okay. Curatorship is about like finding the ways to show cast it but you also have to now apply one more level of art to Add in these dimensions. So yes, it's a tough one But you know, when you, every time when you mentioned Smellcards, I think about your, uh well, one of your projects, which I really like, the one is uh Nostalgia, like for the Kunstlicht Magazine. ah If I'm like articulating things correctly, but that's how I found it out from you. This Nostalgia edition became for me a Nostalgia edition. I will explain why, and it will probably go further to these cards. ah I usually am a kind of person since I relocate a lot and at the moment probably you will be listening to this episode I will already be in Denmark, not in the Netherlands. Usually when I have books, magazines or anything which I've already researched I usually give it to other people I know. And then in the affection field it's well yeah sometimes things are scary, not everyone knows where to get them and so you make the person happier than you just yeah. When I lived, for instance, in Belarus and I brought a lot of French books from all my studies in France when I studied management and flavor and fragrance industry. So I brought these books and just gave it to my friend. And like, she was so happy because she would never get these things there. And um usually I do it with all this kind of stuff. But with this edition, why it became a nostalgia... nostalgia, I'm bad at playing with letters and not my malatang, but... um For me, it became a very nostalgic edition since it's the, well, probably the first thing in many years. I'm actually taken with me to Denmark from here, not like given it to someone. I understand like, wow, what about the commitment? But for me personally, it's a commitment because I have never ever had a chance to read something like that. And I felt like, wow, this is super cool. It's just the idea for publishing house, like really collecting these type of stories. One of the things you used in this particular magazine, okay, you will tell about the idea since I want to hear it. It's also a smell card, like very nicely packed. And this smell card for me, I know how about the offer, but for me it was a one plus one thing equals free because basically this particular smell doesn't give me anything, but together with the story, it gives me a lot. So going back to this magazine, how the... whole idea of like you had a lot of things on your shoulders and you decided well now we also have to make a particular magazine devoted to factory stories plus art that's how I could call it. Yeah. So I'll give you the long story. um So basically, when I was a student at a free university in Amsterdam, would volunteer my time with Kunstlicht, which is an academic journal that's run by student volunteers. And it's all dedicated to visual art. I think it even says, uh Journal for Visual Culture. oh So it's all dedicated to visual art. And I think it was right when I started my internship with Oda Ropa at the beginning of 2021. I think editor and chiefs at the time wrote like a group chat and said, oh, we need some ideas for journal for, uh, uh, for journals, what should we do for the next edit journal? And I said, well, it would be really cool to do something about smell. And so we had one conversation about it and the editor, the editors and chief said, oh, we should do it about nostalgia. And. I was like, I had really no connection actually. I just thought that makes sense. Smell and nostalgia makes a lot of sense. Perhaps I'm unromanticizing it right now, but you know, we'll get farther and then you'll feel better about it. Okay. So yeah, so basically this was like, I guess almost three years ago. And the thing is, that luckily I'm so happy this happened, but... uh they had journal issues like lined up for years. So I didn't get the opportunity to edit the journal until the beginning of 2023. And I was very happy about this because when I proposed the journal idea, let's just do a journal about smell, I had no idea what I was doing in the field of smell. had not found my identity yet. I don't know if I found it. yet, but I think more than back then. And so I hadn't really found my identity yet in like the smell world, whatever you want to call it. And so by the time it was the beginning of 2023, I had found my identity at least enough. And then I had come across all of these examples by then of smell and nostalgia. And I had a better idea of what was necessary or what was what needed to happen still in this field of nostalgia as we call it. And I had also found Emirin's who just interviewed me randomly for City Sniffers for Odaropa. And I just really liked her and we got along very well and she's like, yeah, you know, I'm really interested in smell and I have this article I've been writing about the smell of a Dutch department store and so she was very passionate about smell as well. And I okay, well, I just found my partner in editing this issue. And so yeah, we came together and by then there was a different editor in chief. So there was Lisa and she was really, really great because she was super open to the idea because like I said, it's a journal of visual culture. And so we had to find like a balance between art and smell. because I was like all about the scents and she was like wait but we have to remember the identity of the journal and but she was really experimental and she allowed us to include in the call for papers because I thought this was very important that it wasn't just a call for papers or call for memories or whatever it was we also wanted to do a call for smells and so Also luckily, a lovely perfumer, Lucille LaFront, she sent us six, well she didn't send us, but she sent the ideas for six scents for the journal. So technically we have six, uh but one was turned into the perfume card. So of course then I said, okay, well now we have scents for the journal, so we have to have a scent with the journal. And so um we raised a bit of money because again, we're on a very limited budget. So we raised some money to uh fund the smell card, which is printed by Alphapack, amazing uh printer of these really amazingly smelly smell cards. You know, I had this question, I hadn't researched them, but I thought like, wow, interesting thing. Yeah. I never heard about this company and now you're saying those guys are amazing. Yeah, they're in France. I don't know how many people work, but I always talk with Francoise and she is super amazing. And so we made this card to go with the journal. And what I like about it is that, of course, the journal, it turned a lot into like a memory book, kind of. Like a lot of the... I was really surprised by the... I'm searching for the word right now. vulnerability of the writers because we're talking about publishing something and a lot of these articles are so vulnerable that they are sharing so much because they're about smell and these very integral memories of these people's lives. uh I was really shocked by this, but what I really love is that with the smell card, when you're reading the journal, the entire journal smells like the scent card. So I think everybody is now like every time they smell that smell, if they encounter it again somewhere else, who knows, they will always remember it as the smell of when they were reading nostalgia by, you know, the Künzlich journal nostalgia. So yeah, that's something that I really like about the aspect of the smell card. But of course you can't have something about smell and not have a smell with it. I think that was very important to me and I really emphasized that with my co-editor and she was very happy to have that as well um part of the journal. Well, I'm listening very... like I'm now sitting fascinated just looking at Sofia talking about this journal. Since for me it was such a huge experience reading the stories, almost physically smelling things that I described. ah And I just wanted to two things from my perspective that the first one was that of course everyone will find like favorite stories less favorite stories as usual. I was mostly very deeply touched by the tear gas story. um But I am very amazed by the way these stories are representing uh cultural things. They're like... I don't even think that uh these stories would have the same impact without mentioning smells. And you couldn't smell all of those in the magazine. But somehow, because of the focus... focus... Because of the focus on that, you start... I know you start to immerse even deeper. And... Well, the thing I wanted to ask is if the magazine, I know, if it's gonna be available for a long time, is it possible even to afterwards to reprint it or like send it for a second something? m It's just so valuable in my opinion Well, it's still available I think until we run out of issues. I have no idea how many are left, but it's still available now. And of course we ship, I think for free internationally, so anyone can receive it. I think it was for free, yes. I've ordered free ages. All of those. So, um but I don't know, think what I really liked about this experience of uh editing this journal, um and it was one of my reasons for editing the journal, or one of my main ideas or wishes, I guess you could say wishes, I think is a better word, the smell world. I don't even know what it's called, I struggle with this. But this world that we find ourselves in as, whether we're an academic or a perfumer or an aromatherapist, aromatherapist or a researcher, whatever that may be, I find that, scientist, I find these fields very exclusive. And so we all have our little pods that we hang out. in we have our networks, we call on our networks um to do, oh, I'm doing this, let's do this together again. And it almost like we turn into like uh Martin Scorsese always showing Leonardo DiCaprio. And that's not always what we want, right? We want to expand the world, at least I do. And so something I loved about Nostalgia is We were opening up this world for anyone. Anyone could enter and there was no judgment. It was just, come on, let's see what you got. And I think this posed for really interesting results because you have, first of all, you have perspectives from such diverse corners of the world. Yes. from all different types of people. had artists, had perfumers, we had some uh scholars, like we had all these different types of people coming together. yeah, and there was just, it was just open. And I think that that's, we need more of that. I encourage more of that. I hope I can encourage more of it through whatever I And now you're doing it right in this second as well, I hope Yeah, so, yeah, just every time I try, that's one of my things is I try to when when I meet someone, like I try to extend the arm in that direction and like pull them to go into my network as well. And then the network keeps going and going and going. And that's what I really loved about this, this journal. Luckily, we had an amazing result, right? Maybe maybe if we would have gotten 10 different. contributions, maybe it would have been different. But I think, yeah, it turned out really amazing how, I loved all the different perspectives, like you're talking about the tear gas in the Hong Kong protests. Like, I never would have said we are gonna receive that contribution, never. But we did, and it was really amazing also. yeah, so, yeah. I can't remember what your question was. That means that actually the topic is so interesting that it's just a question that doesn't Yeah, mean, we could have made a whole podcast about it. It's just amazing the idea and of course there will be links to all the things we are mentioning here so that this world should be expansive. But you know, in your answer to this question I found... partly my reason why I'm doing what I'm doing since the beginning. And this is one of the first episodes you've asked me like, well, what's the idea behind the podcast? And I honestly said like, well, I don't know. I've never expected the Russian podcast to reach audience and to make people more interested in smells. And now we are doing it the same here. And I believe more people are interested in doing that. ah Another question, why are we interested in doing that? I believe it's just a belief that... we have to use what we have. So smells might be used, should be used and not using them was probably a huge mistake in the previous and the past. And here I'm coming to the question which I had because it's again, I believe one of the things you do in your work and your research and academic work is just thinking what smells from the past are important to capture or important to find or people need to know them. or smell them, or they don't need it, it's just smells from the past and we already like, we are in a hygienic society, we don't need it and the people just over left, I just wanted to say, but we've survived from through all what we've survived through in the past years. well, smells from, I know the times where people didn't have bath, as usually say, but it's not true for everyone. It's probably for some European countries, it's an issue, maybe not. But the thing is that what I wanted to ask you about, because you research and you have colleagues who do that as well, ah have there been any like particular fundings from the periods of history prior to the times we remember, which probably fascinated you? Like, I know that there is a lady who researched the smells of gloves, leather gloves or something. Not something you've considered. before eating uh nostalgia or before going to a museum, but maybe there were some smells for you which you just discovered and described and you thought like, wow, it's fascinating, how could we not pay attention to that? Yeah, so you kind of touched upon three questions, I think. I feel like it's an investigator. So the first was... How do we choose what sense should be safeguarded? So that was a question. uh So that's a difficult one because I think that depends on you and depends on your culture, depends on your background. But of course there are sense that are going extinct. that we won't encounter. even I was just listening to a lecture by Rachel Hertz yesterday and she was talking about how like so many people have emotional connections with gasoline that they love the smell of gasoline, but gasoline is going to start being less and less available because we're more and more using electric cars. So is the smell of gasoline worth safeguarding? Should it be documented for the future? Mm-hmm. Two examples I always use, or my favorite two examples, are uh magazine stamps. Mm-hmm. Right. So I was in Germany a year ago or so and I smelled a magazine stand and I just was so excited by this because I hadn't smelled a magazine stand or newspaper or magazine stand in years. And this to me, there was a magazine stand around the corner from my house when I was growing up. And so I know that smell very well. And it's kind of funny that they all smell the same, but I guess it makes sense because paper processing whatsoever. uh But yeah, so that one and the smell of the Berlin Ubon is also a smell that I would love if someone would safeguard that smell. uh the way, well, yeah, I wanted to tell you that, but in Russia there is a perfumer who made sounds for the train stations in the Moscow metro. Yeah, so I was instantly thinking about you in this Yuban story, I believe I've heard it in one of the episodes that you've mentioned because you're so fascinating, and I thought like... Wow, probably they also have a lot of perfumes in Berlin, but they probably do not consider it to be that special as you do, since they live there. Yeah, also, yeah, I have a nice connection with it, but maybe someone else doesn't. So I think it's important to safeguard, but maybe someone else doesn't consider it important to safeguard. True. So, yeah, so that's kind of interesting. And then I was, because I was just in Los Angeles, I was thinking, is the reason why I feel often like not so happy in the Netherlands or not so at home in the Netherlands is because the smell is so different because I went home and I'm like automatically you get off the plane you're like it's home like you just recognize it yeah it smells like home so so yeah like even these kinds of implicit smells um They make it probably difficult to decide what things you want to keep or not, because it's different for you, for me, for anyone else. Yeah, so it's almost like, okay, well, a photograph of this might be important for you, but a photograph of this might not be important to me. yeah, it's kind of... If we could all have our own collection of what we want to safeguard for sentence, that would be very interesting. you asked me... So, of course, uh Odeuropa is a more historically based project. So we focus on up to 1920. So a lot of the work that we've done with the olfactory events is mostly to do, I would say, with the 16th and 17th century. And so one of my favorites, favorite scents that we've developed was for a project called Follow Your Nose uh in collaboration with Museum Ulm in Germany and IFF. Mm-hmm. and we created the scent of a pomander. It was for an artwork called the portrait of Eitel Besser by Martin Schaffner and it's from 1516. And the image is an older man, he's wearing a very nice uh fur uh coat or fur scarf, you could say. uh And hidden in his hands, you could almost miss it if you didn't look, is a rosary, a wooden rosary, with a palm ender, a silver palm ender at the end of it. He's kind of, his eyes are kind of staring forward and he's looking like he's in prayer. So he's praying. And you imagine, like the way he looks, he's very well off. He's wealthy. He's wearing a very nice outfit. So you can kind of tell by the whole atmosphere of the photo that the painting that he is a well-off gentleman. So what's interesting about this painting is the palmander, which a palmander, I will explain what a palmander is. A palmander is a, well, it can be silver, but it can also be in other forms, like a lot of people might know, like these oranges with cloves stuck inside of it. That's also a palmander. But these very intricate ones that like the wealthy had are usually silver and they would be on a long chain, especially for women on their skirts. And they would be at arm's reach because people back then up until the late 1800s believed in miasma theory. And miasma theory was that bad smells equals disease. And so when they would pass a bad smell, they could just lift this palm under very quickly up to their nose, cover their nose and smell it. And that was supposed to keep disease away. Now the miasma theory actually doesn't have too much awe off, right? Like, I mean, still hygiene and smell, it's still quite tied together. Well, I have a super stupid story to that, but before you described it so well, I have not... It's a revelation to me right now, since m it's always nice to have an academic researcher here, since you used such uh wonderful ways to describe things. I mean, people sometimes know what things are, maybe not, but when you describe them, like, you couldn't... not to understand what you are talking about. That's good. I'm usually worried that I'm going all over the place. so... Well, no, you do... Well, up to the point. And I remember that in childhood... You're saying about this theory, by the way, I didn't know the name for it, but I know maybe it was also in your childhood or it's just like only in Russia. Like imagine people still use and I was using it. Take, you know, a cotton from a Kinder Surprise uh eggs. Like there is inside there is a toy, like which you have to... construct somehow. Sometimes it's full already, but there is a case for it, like a plastic case. So what we had there back in times, like I'm not that old, but what did we have is we put, oh my god, garlic. Like you put garlic there inside, make small holes in this plastic. uh Yeah, you made a pummander. Sort of. Now I understood it. When you were describing it, like it was mostly from silver, was like, yes, in the Grass Museum of Perfumery it's totally that, because there are like hundreds of pomodores of all forms and shapes, and most of them are from silver. But now when you really described it, and I am from a, like a beginner mind listening to you, I realized that those weird things, which were supposed to uh prevent uh infections and diseases, and we in fact had them like a necklace. Yeah, so those weird... I believe vampires is more likely. Yeah, like I realized that I used a pom-pom back then in my school year. Well, and pomander is the word for this, the silver one and the orange with the cloves. And of course, pomanders came in different forms. So, pomanders could be the silver one and then it could fall kind of like a tangerine and you would have little segments, so a segment of pomander and they would have little drawers and you could take the drawer. open the drawer and you would have the resins or the spices inside and so each one would have its individual components or Karl for baked owns a palmander and inside it's uh a no what's the word for it when when it it's a gyroscope so it was so that it would hang in the chariot chariot cars and so if it was Ah moving, then the gyroscope inside would move with it and holding the burning resins. It wouldn't dump the resins. It would keep them straight in a carriage. But you needed your burning resins uh in a carriage, right? And the other way it was used was, Caro told me, is that you would burn the resins in it and then the silver would warm. So then you could use it as a hand warmer and you could pass it around as a hand warmer. Wow. But the silver ones are for the very upper class. So there's also, I don't know if you know the song, Ring Around the Rosie. Ring Around the Rosie, Pocket Full of Posey, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down. It's a children's song, but it's about the plague. Because you would have Ring Around the Rosie, which is what you get when you would get the plague. pocketful of posies. Posies are the flowers so they thought that the flowers in their pockets would keep them from getting disease but it didn't. Ashes, ashes we all fall down. Well, you can fill in the blank there but that's what that song means. So posies would be the kind of poor man's palmander. Mm-hmm. But back to a much, much nicer story. So Lizzie Marks, a historian on Oda Ropa, she researched a historic recipe for palmanders because you can find historic recipes in books of secrets, they're called. And so she researched, but this one actually was from a segmented palmander, the recipe that we used for Museum Ohm. And so the recipe was written on the palmander itself. And she chose this one because it was a German palmander and we were the German Museum. And so these this was especially in the 16th and 17th century. So the ingredients and I brought it for you to smell. ah Thank you, since I know that this museum is on a reconstruction right now, if I'm not wrong. Yeah, yeah, but, um, Emma Lysenschneider, who is the curator that we worked with, she said that the All Factory tours are doing so well that I think they brought some of the artworks to their, where they're, where they currently are, their offices, so that they could do like mini All Factory tours. but this scent, It's totally from nature, since it does seem like it might be... like all the ingredients seem to be... like might have existed back then. Yeah. To my knowledge. So the recipe was, yeah, things you could probably pull from the garden. Of course, IFF made the scent and then of course it went a little, there was a little bit of perfumer creative interpretation, but um do you want to say something to the ingredients? Or do want me to tell you what the Well, okay, I say what I feel. The red small flower which is carnal, carnal, uh like the very smelly uh flower which guys, I believe in the States people like it more, like carnal. I will... Well, no, but now since we could, we have a courtesy of Googling things and how they are named in different... here it really smells like something to me that I can say. I don't know what those smells are. We are smelling the cat, by the way. I just have a small well with an opening. The flower which I was referring to is this one. Carnation. Carnation, okay. No, no carnation in there. But it smells with eugenol a little bit. mean, this is a component, but... Clove. Yeah, clove. I also feel something minty, but it again might be from thyme, from... Also eugenol, yes, clove. But in the bass something very... I don't know who is that, but I know what exactly. Some seems like... something which actually could be burn some incense like but mirror or But okay, might be like People who just listen also might imagine. Okay, like old-time perfumes. What would they be like? This one is elevated a little bit, but when you said rose now I start feeling There is a really strong flower aspect. Yeah, and the the rich flower the sweet flower I believe I couldn't name anything else, but well, you could probably help us out. Thank you, Sofia. It's such a wonderful opportunity to smell it. Yeah, so it's rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, rose, lavender, clove, civet, ambergris, and musk. But that's the IFF uh pyramid. Component wise it might be different, but you know oh So I had one more challenge that I didn't get uh to say, which I will say now. Okay dude, because afterwards we'll go to the bleeds questions, which is my challenge, so. Okay, so the last challenge, and it's perfect opportunity to say it, is the last challenge of olfactory storytelling. No, no, no. The last challenge of olfactory storytelling, because I said two, and then we started talking about nostalgia. The third one is creating scents, which represent... uh historical ideas or anything because as we know the world of perfumery is quite secretive and so when you give them a historic recipe when you give a perfumer a historic recipe or this is something we realized within Odeuropa is that when we gave the perfumers a historic recipe and they handed us back a scent we had no idea what they had done with that historic recipe and they also keep formula if it's a big house. Otherwise it's possible to do So first of all, we had to emphasize that the accuracy or the use of the actual ingredients that we gave was important. And second of all, yeah, so kind of manage the perfumers uh creative interpretation. We had to manage that. And we also had to know what they did with the recipe. And so this was a really big challenge and still is a very big challenge. So for example, this. Thanks has oregano, but the recipe that we had given to begin with didn't have oregano. yeah, that's also a challenge. of course, authenticity. After working on Oda Ropa and having some press uh engagements within the project, everyone is always saying, so that's how the past smelled, right? That's authentic. And authenticity is a really difficult bar. So yeah, that's another challenge within that kind of creating a heritage scent realm is like the authenticity then of that scent and what you reveal to your audience as authentic and how authentic and so. Yeah, there are a lot of problems. You just touched it and I immediately felt like even musk, which you mentioned like, okay, yeah, musk, like they've been prohibited like hundreds of times in the last few years. And even if you knew like a really, recipe for like very specific, like everything is listed there. Even like, and you have no restrictions, which is not the case. And you had the best like raw materials and perfumes and everything. like the climate still has changed. Yeah. Like, and even the, like we know, and it's a huge challenge for the industry that a rose from here doesn't smell like the rose from there. Which particular rose it was, which particular batch of the roses, like which year, which place, a lot of issues. Yeah. And this one is definitely huge. It's an interpretation. It gives you this one plus one equals free feeling. But if you are going for the authenticity, then it's probably not the easiest field to navigate. A lot of people, a lot of researchers, they value the authenticity, that it really needs to be authentic. But I, and I'm sure many people disagree with me, but for me, I really think that the value is the olfactory storytelling and how it makes the person think, or how it changes their mind. or how it makes them remember something. Just because that's not the exact palm under recipe doesn't mean that now you will remember what miasma theory is. I could ask you maybe in a week and you will probably be able to tell me what it is because I just gave you this tangible thing to kind of like link on. And to me, that's the most rewarding thing, not whether that actually is the recipe. that it's supposed to be. And as much as I, of course, go for as authentic as possible, I have, uh you know, within Odeuropa, we have done that, where we always try to be as authentic as possible when creating these scents. It doesn't mean that that isn't taken with a grain of salt. And, you know. It's more of like, you know, what you are dealing with on a daily basis is giving a sensitive challenge to people more than any other type of challenge. And we also, we are missing this type of challenge. Like people think about that fitness is only a physical thing. Then those who do some sort of work, they think about mental fitness and here's a sensitive fitness. Hello, we also have this one. And I believe more types of this work should be introduced and conducted everywhere. And I hope it will. So thank you. Well, a huge pleasure. I learned a lot. Have my own garlic relation. Sorry guys, but like wearing a Kinder Surprise case on your neck. for month, winter month, it's a little bit weird. We'll go to the bleed section then. The questions. No. I mean... These are going to you. For the Blitz? Yes. uh Right, so let's do this. If you could transport yourself to any moment in history solely through sand, which period would you choose? Uh, it's already not a blitz question because I'm thinking about it. No, I was just thinking that I don't know that I want to be transported to another time. Well, probably it's a good answer. So... Yeah, I mean, it depends. Are you allowing me to be there for like a few hours and then I can leave or is it that I'm like stuck? No, let's say it's a safe setting you could go explore write a paper would say like the 15th and 16th century would be interesting just because I've been surrounded by historians that are just telling me all about the research that's happening there and so then to actually go and experience the smells would be interesting but I think then I'd want to leave after like two hours. Good, two minutes probably. Also the first Rotten Fish or something, which the researchers tell us about, we don't know. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, thanks. So how has your personal scent palette, palette or pal- how it's in English? Palette. Palette. Revolved throughout your journey with Audio-op. I would say I can... Well, I'm just more aware of smells. I don't know if that's what you're asking, but I'm constantly aware of smells now. aware of what smells are around me and then I try to identify them more than I ever did before. Which is kind of annoying but interesting at the same time. But basically this shows that what you're doing is kind of bringing results. Meaning that if like you're saying you had has gone through this journey and it impacted you in a way of recognizing smells, of course you work with them a lot, of course, but this means that it's possible for every individual. Yeah. It might be interesting for every individual then. And sometimes now I relate things I'm smelling to scents created by odor. God. like that smells like the smell of hell I don't like it or you know so now em yeah I recognize things and in relation to actual scents which is interesting because we usually relate things to sources like strawberry or something like this but now I'm like that smells like that scent but I don't necessarily have the words for it still but I find that interesting as well At some point maybe I'll have the vocabulary enough to like say, smells like... I believe it might be the next project, a huge one, since it's, well, yeah, it's not a blitz question again already. It's not a blitz even, but right, it's something I think about a lot. As you said, people go, like, bring something to a resource. It's the way, it's the easiest way to do it. But eventually, even if we all bring something to a resource, would that be enough to the resource, to the source? Would that be enough for an efficient communication? Right, well, ah do you yourself, like when exploring historical scents, you find yourself more drawn to floral, or spicy aromas? Oh yeah, like... I could relate to that. ah If you had to create a scent capsule for future generations to experience uh today, well, let's say today where you are. What would you put in this capsule and send to someone in the future? uh And like, you really wish them to explore the essence of this period of time. like a past period. Well, yeah, for them it would be a past period and for you today it's the present. So wait, sorry, I'm getting confused. So you want a scent from today? Okay, so a smell that I would smell today, sent to the future so that they would smell. And you think it's so important then to smell this smell and it will help them to realize, well yeah, that's the way they smell. Like what you do with these uh pieces for some places or something. But you have to choose one. You've already mentioned like you want probably it's not gonna be the best. Or we discussed bread with sprinkles. Would you scent it? that's really hard. Well, I'll tell you the first thing that came to mind, which is really embarrassing, but I was thinking more of like the nineties because I've been very nostalgic lately and I was thinking of the smell of like L'Oreal kids no more tears shampoo m because I used to go to the supermarket and just like smell those intensely, like open them and smell them in the aisle while I was shopping. Yeah, let's go with L'Oreal No More Kids... No more kids. No more tears. No more kids. L'Oreal No More Tears Shampoo. I think it was like a watermelon one I really liked. I wanted to make some bad jokes about no more kids and no more tears but yeah I will not do that That is a super stupid answer, but that's okay. That's totally okay. Well, bread with sprinkles, no, it's not. And the last one. But, well, breathe out, breathe in. If you could collaborate with just one perfumer to create a limited edition fragrance inspired by the project which you're currently working with, which is Odorop, I like a main work. ah Which person probably, or which type of perfumer would you choose for this? Okay this is really embarrassing but I don't really know many perfumers. That's the thing for the industry to be embarrassed, not for you. uh Yeah, because I mean, of course, there's the one perfumer that I've worked with a couple of times, Carol Kovetz, and I love working with her and she makes really great sense, but I've already worked with her. So I don't know, maybe this is, call me up. We could make a call for perfumers because there are a lot of independent perfumers as well, which we don't know about. if you could imagine ah what would you like at this extravaganza event, for instance, which is set kind of soon, um if you were selling a merch product like... Yeah, so like to raise some money for the next project, etc. Of course all for good reasons. What you would choose for the smell of it. So like uh I mentioned a bottle, it's written unknown perfumer because we don't know perfumers who we work with. Thank you. But like... Oh, I would love we've talked about this a bunch of times in Oda Ropa, but having a scented candle with one of our scents, I think it would be fun. mean, Inge Hausman, who's a Dutch researcher, she made a candle from the perfume of Constantine Haukend, who's yeah, a man of many hats, but she made a perfect historic perfume from a recipe he had. she made it into a candle. So that I thought that was really cool. And I even have the candle in my house and I love to burn it. So I think that would be really cool if we had like a candle burning or candle for Yeah, and I also believe having candle instead of a perfume, also very special considering the work you do. it's, well, it sort of sums it up probably better. Because burning has been, like for those who hasn't got the idea, like burning has been one of the main ways to transport the sense through generations, like for centuries. Perfume is just a very modern thing compared to that. But it's a good idea that it's not, it's another application, another medium to translate. Yeah, I'm always thinking about the presentation methods. Yeah, yeah, that's the way we're different now. But thank you, Safiya. I so enjoyed having you. I believe our listeners will have some links to check in the description box. We will prepare for them. Right?

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