human s(c)en(t)ses

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell.” - Ackerman

Smell is one of our basic senses that we are not always conscious of (unlike, say, vision).  It’s one of the more subtle factors in our daily environments, but has a huge impact on our overall perception, as well as our interactions with each other.  Scents that we cannot readily describe or detect can strongly influence who we are attracted to and what we remember.

In this project, we are interested in exploring scent’s influence on human relationships and memory.

Digging around and doing some research, I found several studies on smell and human recognition.  There’s also a lot of interesting research on the neural structures for the sense of smell.  More research to come…

Below are some very interesting patents on camouflage suits for those who want to disguise their human scent.  The application is mainly for hunters and biologists, and is essentially an odor absorptive suit that cloaks your presence from wildlife.  Surprisingly lo-tech, the material of the suit is essentially a sandwich of fabric (wool, felt, cotton, etc.) with a layer of odor absorptive material in between (fibers embedded with charcoal, baking soda, chlorophyll, or a similar substance).  The patent also includes various ways of carrying your stuff around (backpack, fanny pack or duffel bag).

You can also apparently wear the following if you are in the tropics, and can’t bear to cover your entire body with this suit made of layered fabric:

On the opposite end, we have a patent for a scent-dispersing boot.  This guy allows you to leave a trail of scent to lure deer…

Combining these ideas together, and repackaging to customize for the average woman, we have…

the proposal: