Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Smell But Were Afraid To Ask

IAP 2001 Activity

Webpage v2.0 26/11/00

Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, website-AT-jofish-DOT-com

"Of all the human senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, and the feeling that a huge man with a barbecue fork is lurking in the closet - perhaps the least appreciated, yet most important, is our sense of smell."

Barry, Dave. A Nose by Any Other Name Still Smells. Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 3 May 1998.

NB ROOM CHANGE: Now 66-110

I am a grad student at the Media Lab, and my current research involves conveying information using smell. As such, I've spent the last several months learning more about smell than I ever wanted to know.

This course is a whirlwind tour of some of the most interesting facts about smell, which will give a general grounding in the subject and challenge some assumptions.

We will start at 10:30 each day, and go for about two hours, with room to run over if necessary. We will meet in room E15-335, on the third floor of the Media Lab. No previous knowledge of smell expected, but attendance at the first class will greatly help you understand any of the other classes. Please email me to signup, and if you have any particular areas of smell you'd like me to cover, let me know. The signup is just to let me know how many people to expect for photocopy/room size reasons. No, you can't get credit for it.

There will be an emphasis on use of primary sources, and there will be some way of obtaining copies of these sources. In the short list below, click on the days listed to see the primary sources for that day. I suggest you do so and let me know what in particular interests you. We obviously won't cover all of the content of all of the papers listed on any given day, but this gives you an idea where I'm getting my information from. My complete annotated bibliography is available here. [NEW:updated Smell Reference List]

Please note that Smell & Memory is now part of Day I rather than Day II: it just wouldn't fit on Day II.

January 16th: How We Smell and Smell & Memory

January 17th: Smell & Human Relations

January 18th: Cultural Background of Smell: Uses over History

January 19th: Smell In Media

Who cares?

I think the work covered will be of interest to a very diverse crowd, including but not limited to:

Primary Sources to be covered:

January 16th: How We Smell and Smell & Memory

January 17th: Smell & Human Relations

January 18th: Cultural Background of Smell: Uses over History

January 19th: Smell In Media

Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, website-AT-jofish-DOT-com