EMAILED DALE AIR
SUBJECT: AROMAS
September 2005
Having ploughed my way through numerous online chemical aroma catalogues
without really knowing what I was looking for I finally found the family-run
Aroma by Design company, Dale Air (1), in England.
I was particularly drawn to this company because of their website introduction:
Do you need the smell of melted chocolate for your confectionary display? Or the aroma of sizzling, roast chicken? How about Grannie's Kitchen and the smell of baking or coffee, or even the pungent stench of Dragon's Breath?
Dragon's Breath! Can they be serious? I did a google on the company and soon found out that they were! They have, for example created the smell of a dinosaur for the Natural History Museum, London, that was so repungent that the curators eventually opted for the smell of a swamp instead:
Recreating the breath of a T-rex for a huge model dinosaur in London's
Natural History Museum posed new challenges.
"We spoke to palaeontologists, who gave us a description of the dinosaur.
Basically, the bigger the creature, the smellier they were," Mr Knight
said.
"The dinosaurs would have had open sores from fighting, and rotting meat
stuck in the gaps between their teeth.
"We needed all these features in the eventual odour," he said. (2)
Dale Air, who originally produced air fresheners, have now moved over to the more lucrative and expanding aroma design industry. They have provided the smell of Ancient Egypt to a virtual holiday high street experience, care of holiday retailer Thomson.
The multi-sensory virtual holiday experience was developed by Remote
Media. It features of a specially created 3D video filmed on location in Egypt
with a new aroma system developed by Dale air, controlled by the system to
trigger four individual aromas to complement the 3D scenes within the Video.
The user experiences the virtual holiday experience by wearing a special 3D
Headset whilst the aromas are wafted towards the virtual traveller. Footage
was shot in various resorts and tourist attractions across Egypt earlier this
year, using specialist cameras to capture the 3D film.
"This is a real taste* of how holidays could be sold in the future.
It's the first time any travel company has created technology of this kind
and it allows customers to 'try before they buy'," says Miles Morgan,
Thomson sales and marketing director. (3)
* such poetic synaesthesia!
They are responsible for the smell of sun, sea and coconut which wafts around
a chain of travel agents in the UK, and Kylie's breath for her model at Madame
Tussauds. They also provide sets of aromas such as the Nostalgia Set, which
is used to evoke memories in patients with senile dementia, and hopefully
trigger speach.
After several emails (see below) to Frank Knight (who runs the company) about if his aromas were suitable for my project, I finally ordered 25 aroma samples. These are themed aromas that the company only sell for professional use (to avoid misuse).
Email extracts from Frank Knight:
RE: THE DISPENSING SYSTEM
I can't advise on your method of dispensing but is quite ingenious*(4) and
could work well. We have never tried that method of dispensing so it is a
matter of trial and error..... I suggest that you take one or two liquid samples
for testing to your dispersal method. One worry is that if the plastics are
not chemical resistant then the plastic will leak.
RE: LEMON-WILD
Lemon-wild is now off our lists as the EU have made another lot of stupid
changes and we have had to withdraw it. But we have a lemon which is near
to wild lemon. Cuban cigar we are waiting for some chemicals to arrive and
could be ten days. Is that OK?
Aromas I ordered (250 ml):
Cuban Cigar Smoke
Dentist-Clove Oil
Whisky - Scotch
Coffee
Stables/Horses
Fish Market
Grass/Hay
Lavender
Mummy (Egyptian)
Pine/Heather/peat
Roses
Jaguar Spray
Sea Breeze
Sports Changing Room
Steam/Oil/Trains
Street Bomb
Sun, Sand & Coconut
Tropical Rain Forest
Urine
Bacon
Clinic Hospital
Crusty Bread
Garden mint
Vanilla
Lemon - Wild
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Of the five senses, smell has the closest thing to the full power
of the past. Smell is really transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting
are just not as powerful if you want your whole being to go back for a second
to something."
Andy Warhol, From A to B and Back Again. (5)
LINKS/REFERENCES:
(1) Dale Air
URL: http://www.daleair.com/
(2) Firm kicks up a big stink for Tyrannosaurus rex
By Alexandra Hudson, Kirkham, England
July 10, 2004
URL: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/09/
1089000357350.html?from=storylhs
(3) Text adapted from Remote Media, latest news, 05/11/04 - Virtual Holidays
are now a reality thanks to Thomson and Remote Media.
URL:http://www.remotemedia.co.uk/
(4) * Thanks to Usman Haque for sharing his aroma emitting sytem with me,
see:
I Met Usman Haque
(October 2004)
and to Odd Gytri for convincing me to buy all-steel airbrush guns, see:
Rang Odd Gytri of GAC-NORGE
(August 2005)
(5) The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Harvest Books, April 6, 1977, ISBN: 0156717204.