Olfactophone - where the common language is scent

I am in Tokyo, Japan. I haven't seen much of it, for 3 reasons: 1) It's been 36 hours since I landed, 2) In that time, I've worked a full work day, and 3) the weather was so rainy when we finished up that I couldn't use the long walk back to my hotel to sight-see.

Nevermind! It's blue skies in Tokyo today, and I'll be taking a good wander around. I'm saving some of my perfumery jaunts to accompany Gary Chin (Asia Perfume Foundation founder) when he gets here, so this is basically my one free day. I'm thinking art galleries and matcha, topped off with some convenience store snacks…?

I have to be back at the hotel by 17:30 to have a meeting with Marina, my perfume student, about a little project we are cooking up. I haven't had a genuine holiday (bar the Christmas break) - that is to say, where I haven't left the country for work reasons - since 2022. I do not mind AT ALL. I love the fact that I get to do projects overseas with amazing people several times a year.

This non-holiday is comprised of two parts, Japan and Hong Kong. In Japan I am deeply fortunate to team up with the gifted perfume artist Naoko Kusunoki, whose short career sprang from using scent design as her final project for her Masters in Fine Arts. Since 2019, she has opened a perfume studio (bespoke only), put on talks on scent around Japan, composed 5 perfumes for the Scriabin Sonatas reimagined (where they were diffused into the concert hall as the music played) in Graz, Austria (there are still some available as wearble perfumes, by the way. They're divine.), has scent portraits on exhibition at the Olfactory Art Keller gallery in New York, and has had designed ambient scents fort multiple art exhibitions in Tokyo. The list goes on… for example she's currently working on a scent for an art museum as their signature scent.

So how did I end up getting to do an exhibition with her? In late 2023 I contacted her to be a judge for the Asia Perfume Foundation's inaugural awards to be hosted in February 2024. She said yes, and we remained in contact every since. In mid 2024 I floated the idea of meeting up with her when I was in Asia, and said that we could discuss a potential joint project one day. She one-upped me by suggesting that we just… do the project.

So, here I am in Tokyo, one week out from putting on an exhibition with this artist whom I admire so much.

Get to the point, Nadia. What is the project?

Olfactophone - where scent is the common language

Naoko send me an almost stream-of-consciousness set of notes outlining some ideas that she'd had brewing, with two particularly fleshed-out ones that she was unsure how to actually execute. In comes Nadia, the executor. One thing I am good at is data transformation. I took Naoko's ideas and combined them into an exhibition concept that I visualised in an instant after reading her notes - I could see her vision and it gave me my own that we could turn into a real tangible experience. Naoko had wanted to play on the idea of language in scent, and how tricky communication in scent is, particulary across global regions (she did 2 perfumery courses in English, after all. It's confusing enough as a native speaker, let alone in a second language). She also wanted to tie in this idea of coloured phenomena in perfumes such as Vent Vert and L'Heure Bleu. Colouring an uncoloured thing, such as weather, emotion, time, etc, appealed to her.

All of this I completely understood, and presented my idea to her: an olfactory dialogue between two perfumers.

We took a concept, along the theme as described: an unscented thing, coloured. We came up with:

1. Pink Melancholy

2. Grey Daydream

3. Clouds of Teal

4. Taste of Gold

5. Liminal Blue

6. Noisy Black

and used each of these to speak through scent. Without sharing details, yet, we formulated a perfume for each concept.

Next, we got together to discuss the notes (not the ingredients, just the notes). Using the ideas of the other person, we took a note or two from the other and swapped out from our own formulations. We then discussed the difference this had made to our original perfumes. All fo this via videocalls, by the way - language only! 

My first day in Tokyo was spent in Naoko's sky-high studio on the 11th floor of a condominium complex in Aoyama. We shared our scents and formulations, sniffed and smelled, and then spent four hours reformulating all of them using ingredients from our previous versions to craft a common perfume for each concept - a common language, if you will. We are calling in the Lingua Franca. linguist geeks will know that this isn't strictly accurate but the rest of us know it doesn't matter and the concept still comes across.

We'll be exhibiting these works at a small underground bar in Nakameguro, with a station for each concept showing the “conversation” we had to get to the lingua franca. All are welcome, but due to the size of the bar, we have to spread out the timings. If you are in Tokyo and would like to visit the exhibition (March 21-23), please get in touch with me.

And if Tokyo is a little too far for you, never fear - I could be popping up in your location for a scented art project at any given time, apparently!