Scented Scrabble

Koku
the radio show
on everything scent, smell, odour, spice, perfume, perfumers, history


by host and perfumer
Vedat Ozan
becoming available online hereand Koku @ Açık Radyo is on Facebook



here, facebook page, including recent Harpers Bazaar spread
here
Listen, also here
Read here

















photos:
Scented Scrabble: by Lura Astor
Perfumer Vedat Ozan: by Serkan Eldeleklioglu

Basenotes' March Madness winning by a hare

It's Lutens in the lead by a spritz as Chergui sillages past Tauer's no! no! Tauer's L’air du Désert Marocain inches ahead

Who will it be folks in March Madness at Basenotes?

Ha ha
a resin wreath to the winners

here

photo: Bachmont

A Smell of Death - centuries later, smells sweet

Death comes in varying smells

I am not a coroner or forensics person
but have read
that the smells range
from vanilla to scatological to
smelling ghosts of perfumes past

Woody TopNote

Here is an interesting article on the use of essential pine oil for Vietnamese mummification some centuries ago. Also of note, cinnamon wine, rice, pemou wood, coffins made of shell, lime, rice paste, sand, molasses and/or honey ...

... the mummy's joints were still supple hundreds of years later, as were the pine oil soaked betel and areca leaves (the two leaves are often chewed together).

picture: areca

Stereo Smelling

A recent article

Smelling Scenery in Stereo:
Desert Ants Perceive Odor Maps in Navigation

is worth a read clickhere from ScienceDaily

For the record
I smell in Surround Smell ! ~LA

photo: electron microscope ant here

Limon 'Cello!

more cello as Spring blooms burst open

from Adam Hurst

his site click here









pic: Dragonfly Metamorphosis

Odors as Words chirp chirp

With time to merely skim
rather than read in depth
Jaron Lanier's book
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
Alfred A. Knopf, NY 2010
caught my attention.


With titles such as the following
for those who know me/my work, is it any wonder?

Editing is Sexy; Creativity is Natural

Were Odors the First Words

Digital Peasant Chic

Paring the Circle

What will Money Be?

What is a Person?

From Images to Odors

and quotes such as

A smell is a synecdoche: a part standing in for the whole.

Perhaps the grammar of language is rooted in the grammar of smell.

In addition to the normal language we all use to describe objects and activities, we reserve a special language to express extreme emotion or displeasure, to warn others to watch out or get attention. This language is called swearing.

One of Charles Darwin's most compelling evolutionary speculations was that music might have preceded language.

Only a handful of species, including humans and certain birds, can make a huge and ever-changing variety of sounds.


Illustration: John Gould 1841 large ground-finch Geospiza magnirostris, one of Darwin's finches.
Charles and Chatham Islands, Galapagos Archipelago

It's Spring ... Are Your

Olfactory Bulbs blooming?



photo: Flemming Christiansen

nasal organ

 









playing
the
nasal organ
gives
such
pleasure

and
the nasal organ
plays with us ...

trickery, delight, early warning system,
fun, foolery, ridiculous sublime

presage

-->

The receding tide

gathers momentum to wash the shore again

Illustration: Blue Wave Lura Astor

Kiev

Models dressed as
perfume bottles
at an opening in Kiev
Tauer Perfumes
at 45 seconds
click here










Illlustration: Beautiful Lace  Lura Astor

trip the light fantastic

Mattias Rodrick

listen to here
here and

Rodrick's site and videos here

La Loie Fuller Folies Bergere ...
Loie Fuller was filmed by Edison, working with light projection and early film.
I danced the historical choreography - with 50 yards of fabric. It took tremendous strength to project the fabric into space at the right time with the right movements, hitting the music and light cues, without the translucent, silk fabric falling or failing.

trip the light fantastic:
lyrics from The Sidewalks of New York/ East Side, West Side
words/music: Chas. B. Lawlor and James W. Blake

food writer goes perfume shopping

Corby Kummer,
food writer,
goes perfume shopping
with
Luca Turin


read here from Technology Review/MIT



photo: Felix Fernandez Penny more here

wish upon a star - celebrity fragrances

for some fun

here is a list of celebrities and some of the fragrances they wear.

A lot of Gendarme mentioned, which translates as Policeman.


Fashion design houses bringing out their own perfumes is relatively recent, historically.

photo: Gendarmerie à Rochefort: Jean-Marie Dumont/Yoyo17017