As a society, we favor sight and often ignore this rich olfactory information. Although not everyone is, humans evolved to be capable of perceiving and communicating this information.  

Being able to have a more acute understanding of smell will allot us a more clear understanding of our surroundings, our environment, our bodies, our health, our memory formation and recall. Scent can tell you about the genetics of those around you, the species in your local ecosystem, about disease and danger; it holds the traditions and foods of a culture. 

So here lies my mission: help people increase their olfactory literacy, but how?
Scent is a wonderful well of information, but as a medium involving chemistry, artistry, neuroscience, perception, physiology, genetics, biology it can be a pretty intimidating field to approach, but it really doesn’t have to be.

Play provides such a fun, joyful, low friction access point into learning, specifically with complex ideas like olfaction. This is the direction I wanted to channel my efforts toward - empowering others to follow their own curiosity into the world of scent .

There is a longstanding parallel between scent and sound; it is present in the temporal quality, in the subjective nature, and even in the language used to describe scent. Some common terms in scent practice: notes, accords, harmonies, perfumer’s organ.

Through this project, I wanted to use this correlation to my advantage. I chose to use the actual mechanisms of music making - specifically the form of a piano. This form is so familiar to us from grand piano’s in concert halls to the toy pianos given to children. This makes it an intuitive and non intimidating entry point to play.