Nosy researcher’s quest to map the world’s ‘smellscapes’ | Science

CChristmas may be associated with the aromas of oranges and pâtés, but our cities also have special scents the rest of the year. Today, a researcher is publishing an atlas attempting to capture these unusual “olfactory landscapes”.

Dr Kate McLean-MacKenzie, a designer and researcher at the University of Kent, said she was first intrigued by smell 15 years ago.

“I realized there was a huge gap in that we communicate what we see – and we can record that and share it through Instagram and photography and drawing – and we can record and share sounds digitally. But any means of recording and communicating smells was largely missing,” she said.

As a result, McLean-MacKenzie began mapping “scentscapes” in different locations, including many cities around the world.

This involves asking participants to take “scent walks” down the street – recording not only what they can smell, but also its intensity and duration, whether it is unexpected, whether they like it or not, and any associations the scent evokes.

“I analyze that data and from that I create visual maps and then sort of a cultural narrative about what smell tells you about these cities in response to what comes out on scent walks,” McLean-MacKenzie said. “So this is all a human interpretation, it’s largely subjective, and it’s about the stories that smells lead us to in cities.”

Cities mapped since 2011 include Glasgow, Edinburgh, Canterbury, Amsterdam, Verona, kyiv, Kolkata and Paris, with the atlas covering 40 sites.

Although the human sense of smell compared to that of other animals has long been ridiculed, recent research has shown that it should not be sniffed: among other studies, scientists have discovered that humans can distinguish odors that occur just tens of milliseconds away.

McLean-MacKenzie said the goal of scent walks is not to identify a scent per se. “It’s about giving it a name and therefore giving meaning to these smells in people’s lives.”

Among the examples, McLean-MacKenzie said one participant referred to a particular smell as “the smell of broken dreams.”

“It was someone in New York who basically said…the smell of broken dreams is the smell of stale beer on the sidewalk, walking home late at night, still single,” she said.

The cards, she added, capture the ephemeral nature of smells, showing the source of the smell on the day the scent walk took place and the scent can be blown out.

“It’s like an impressionist painting of light. It’s a moment in time and the only way to experience it is to go out and feel it for yourself,” she said.

McLean-MacKenzie said the maps could become a useful historical document of how cities smell today, as future generations might have different experiences — with the proliferation of electric vehicles, for example.

She hopes the atlas will encourage readers to use all of their senses when walking, both physically and digitally.

“By being interested in how other people feel about spaces in a way that you might not, there is a level of acceptance, tolerance and understanding that as individuals we are all very different and see things in different ways,” she added.

McLean-MacKenzie said even festival-related scents can depend on where someone is in the world.

“We can say [the] The smells of Christmas are tartlets, Christmas pudding, turkey, fires and everything else,” she said. “But in Calcutta it’s not, it’s smells of Chhena cake and lights and different things happening and different drinks and foods around. And the smell of cold for them is 20°C, while for us it is below zero.”

Smells can even bring surprises: McLean-MacKenzie said that when a participant who recorded odors in Antarctica encountered a dead seal, he discovered that it gave off a pleasant smell of leather.

“Just because something smells bad doesn’t mean it’s bad, and it’s only temporary,” she said. “So get over yourself and go breathe and see what it feels like.”