The Ambassador Likes to Smell Books Too! ;-)

Last month I was invited to an alumni dinner with the Ambassador of the Netherlands Tjeerd de Zwaan, on the occasion of the visit of the Rector Magnificus of Universiteit Leiden Professor Carel Stolker and his colleagues.

During the dinner me with some friends sat in the same table with the Ambassador himself, alongside the Head of NESO Marvin Bakker and Scientific Director of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Professor Gerard Persoon.

We stumbled upon a topic on tablets replacing real books, and I said to the Ambassador that one thing I do not like about reading digital books on tablets is the lack of book smells, because I like to smell books. Surprisingly, he said that he likes to smell books too! ;-)

And here's us taking a photo with the friendly Mr. Zwaan.

[bliff] presentation slides

I was having so much fun making the presentation slides for my graduation presentation, despite it took me really a lot of time to make one.

But anyway, here some of my favourite slides ;)

more images can be found here.

[bliff] making and testing the olfactory board game

“Bliff” is an olfactory board game in which players’ olfaction (sense of smell) is the only sense required for them to advance through the game. Players are given various challenges regarding their sense of smell, and their ability to answer these challenges will be rewarded with certain number of moves.

The design of the board game was inspired by existing traditional board games such as Chinese Checkers and Ludo, based on the facts that these games are already familiar to people in general and its simplicity enables players to play the game without learning many rules. This consideration was also taken because olfactory games are practically new and unfamiliar (thus it requires player’s adaptation), so other game elements should be simple and easy to play.

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Bliff is developed as a part of my graduation project/research entitled: “Bliff: Exploring Olfaction Autonomy in Olfactory Board Games” for the MSc Media Technology programme at Leiden University. The project was supervised by Edwin van der Heide and Maki Ueda.

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MAKING BLIFF

To make a game, there are several elements I had to make. However, since neither my paper nor the physical product of the game is copyrighted, I limit the description of game elements on the making of the scents only.

pawns for bliff

The scents in this game are used as pawns, and they are contained in small bottles I bought at a drogist (drug store) in Den Haag. In total, I needed at least 18 different scents to be contained in 39 bottles. Since extracting ingredients to get all those different scents could take really a lot of time (which I didn’t have, unfortunately), I bought some of the ready-made scents essentials oils (most of these I bought at Dille and Kamille) and food essences (available at most supermarkets). Those which were not yet available in liquid forms (or too expensive to buy one) I extracted the scents of the ingredients using alcohol.

essential oils

I went to media tech classmate Ali’s place to extract these ingredients because he has an electric stove at his apartment (as alcohol would be a terrible combination with gas stove), and helped by Maarten, we made several “perfumes”.

Some of the ingredients were successfully extracted, yet some of them not. But at least I had enough scents for my game.

TESTING BLIFF

Since game development is an iterative process, I needed to test my game to see whether it worked or not. Basically the game should be engaging yet does not create olfactory fatigue. I held 11 game sessions with a total of 22 players in the span of 2 weeks. I asked them to play and I observed the game play. I also asked them to fill in questionnaires to know what the players think towards the game.

nisaar fills in the questionnaires

lucine sniffs

maarten sniffs

polly experiences tip-of-the-nose phenomena

“Bliff: Exploring Olfaction Autonomy in Olfactory Board Games” was presented on Friday, 18 February 2011 at Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden alongside Hanna Schraffenberger’s work “On The Liking of Modern Art”.

Thanks Yous!

Edwin van der Heide (for his supervision).

Maki Ueda (for her support and inspiration/reason why I wanted to make a project on olfaction). 

Maarten Wesselius (for his support, helping me in smell extraction, and be the first test subject). 

Marijke van Gorp (for her support and preventing me from malnutrition :P ). 

Hanna Schraffenberger (for arranging the graduation presentation). 

Ali Elgin (for lending his electrical stove) 

Peers: Maki Ueda, Stelios Giannoulis, and Polly Oskam. 

The Players (Maarten W., Marijke, Linda, Carl, Cindy, Daniel, Maarten vd Mark, Alwin, Vincent, Polly, Heike, Nisaar, Stelios, Maarten M., Jan Jaap, Joris vd Bos, Avi, Ainil, Lucine, Anouk, Rianne, Lieven). 

you can see a complete set of photos of bliff here. 

[urban explorers] day 3

The third and final day (Sunday 23 May 2010) was a short one. I spent a couple of hours before and after the event to stroll down in the city of Dordrecht. The city was really cool. Just when I thought Leiden was nice and old, Dordrecht was even older. The city has small tunnels, narrow alleys, and really European atmosphere. It is the oldest city in the Netherlands and is famous for its rich history and culture.

 

 

Here are some photos from Dordrecht and the last day of Urban Explorers.

Big thank you to Maki Ueda.

http://ueda.nl 

http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/

answer to smell x illusion: http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/2010/05/smell-x-illusion-answer.html

making the smell x illusion: http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/2010/05/smell-x-illusion-making.html

photos: 

http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/2010/05/smell-x-illusion-photos-1.html 

http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/2010/05/smell-x-illusion-photos-2.html

[urban explorers] day 1 & 2

On Friday (21 May 2010), the first day of the festival,(around 3 hours before the start of the boat trip), we cleaned the spray cans to refill them with some other smells. Unfortunately, some previous smells were too strong that even it took hard work to clean the cans even with loads of spiritus. And I had to get some deep breaths outside for many times because the smell of the spiritus (i.e. methanol) really made me dizzy.

the monkeys who keep smiling when i cleaned the cans with spiritus

The first rondvaart (boat trip) was at 19.30. Most of the passengers were fellow urban explorers artists, I think. This time maki used 20 smells: lavender, fries, coffee,chocolate, coconut milk, surinaamse toko, bbq chicken, beer, cognac,baby, vlierbes, robijn (clothes softener), myrrh, forest, rose, pizza, coconut milk, rum coke, neroli water, wood, bbq, and chanel 5.

Maki's answer to smell (taken from maki's blog)

We then had a nice dinner at roodkapje afterwards, along with Yota and Akane, whom Maki is going to work with for the next project, The Tattoer. After dinner they all went home, while I, after assuring there would be night train from dordrecht, went to the concerts at popcentrale and energiehuis. As i walked through the parking lot, a littlegirl (around 8 or 9 years old) who was playing there with some friends approached me and asked me some questions. Since I couldn't speak Dutch she asked some people around there (from the security guard to the festival committee) how to ask some questions. Her name was Melda, and her friend Chaja had Indonesian descent. There was also a boy who was playing with them too and i guess his name was Tane. After that short but nice conversation with some children, I went to Popcentrale but Aucan had not yet seen on the stage. While waiting, I opened the festival booklet and realised that Lars Horntveth (of Jaga Jazzist) was playing next  door at the energiehuis. And so i quickly went there, and it was one of the most amazing performances i hadever seen.

Multi-instrumentalist Lars Horntveth was accompanied by Emenon.Their performance was mesmerising. I was also highly amazed by the drummer Gard Nilssen. I believe it was the best drumming performance I had ever seen in my entire life. The orchestra consisted of brass section, string section, and there was even a harpist.

After being jaw-dropped by those Norwegian musicians, I went to Popcentrale next door to see Aucan. The Italian band was not that (uhm..) impressive. Too aggressive if I might say. I then waited for the next band, The Sedan Vault. I had seen them when I was at Dour Festival, of whom I thought the vocalist was a crossbreed of Ian Brown and Liam Gallagher. And just as last year, their performance was so-so. So I left the venue after the third song.

The next day (Saturday 22/5) Maarten joined me to the event.We had a short stroll in the beautiful city, even bought some strawberries to snack before arriving at CBK.

strawberries

At 14.00 we parted as maarten went to have a look at the event (and also tried Edwin's Radioscape) and I helped maki cleaning the cans. There were not too many cans to clean and we even came an hour too early at the dock.

taking photo of the boat while waiting

The first round was at 18.00 and i asked maarten to take some photos during the boat trip. Maki said later that it was the best round amongst the other 3.

Maki sprays


Maki changes the spray can

the passengers (and our captain!)


the captain

 
view from the boat

Anyway, due to misschedule(the first boat trip was re-scheduled to 17.30 instead of 18.00), Maki wasforced to do the next boat trip directly after the first one. However, the compressors were almost empty so we had to fill them quickly. There were some nervousness at that time, but it ran well in the end. When the second trip was finished, and also we finished cleaning up, we had dinner at the roodkapje.

turkish tart

After the dinner, we quickly ran to Bibelot to see Amiina. It was a really nice performance, although unfortunately we only managed to see the last song.

Amiina

Then we walked to energiehuis, where Greg Haines was performing. There were also some changes in the schedule of the performance, Greg Haines performed at 22.00 instead of 23.00, and the one who performed at 23.00 was DAAU, a Belgian four-piece band.

Greg Haines


DAAU

Tim Hecker was the last performance of that night and he successfully put me to.. sleep. It was already one-ish when everybody was giving an applause, waking me up from my nap. Maarten and I then walked to the station and found out the bitter truth: the train only ran to Delft, as the railway between Delft and Den Haag was being repaired. Half grumbling, we took the bus from Delft to Leiden. (I was the one who grumbled, Maarten tried to de-grumble me, hehe) and reached home at almost 4.

more photos can be found here.

[urban explorers] preparation

21-23 May 2010.

Urban Explorers was a 3-day-art-festival which took place in Dordrecht (21-23 May 2010).Maki, my teacher at art science, asked me to help her for her exhibition with smells, and i was more than happy to do it. Her exhibition, SMELL X ILLUSION, was to spray various scents on a boat trip along the Dordrecht canal, using paint sprayer and 2 compressors.

On Tuesday (18 May) we met at CBK (Centrum Beldeende Kunst) Dordrecht, and had a try out with the equipment. So we filled the spray cans with 18 different smells (grass, cucumber, beer, white wine, orange juice, bread, chocolate, mocca, apple pie, bubble gum, neroli water (which smells like a wet tissue from a plane or train), baby, soap, myrrhe, and chanel 5.

spray cans

 
transporting the compressors

 
compressors on the boat

The try out went really well, thespray cans and compressors worked perfectly. The smells however, need some adjustments. Some alcohol-based synthetic smells like mocca, bubblegum, and chocolate were too concentrated and thus were too strong.The more natural smell like beer and orange juice (maki used real beer and orange juice) had the perfect level of concentration.

 

After the try out, we had a dinner at an Italian restaurant. I think it was the nicest Italian restaurant I've ever been to in the Netherlands.

pizza! with ham and egg, yum yum!

On the way back to Rotterdam and Leiden, we took a really old train (which I haven't seen it before), and I was so amazed by the interior. I felt like being in a Sherlock Holmes movie! (the one with Basil Rathbone of course, not Robert Downey Jr).

love the colour of this old train


more photos can be found here.

[smell and art] the presentation

For my presentation I laid down 16 different smells in 16 identical brown bottles (so that people wouldn't be able to see the colour of the liquid), each accompanied by a card with a question which the player have to guess what smell it was and follow the instruction on the card. If the player answered correctly, s/he will be 'guided' to the right track. If the player reaches his/her destination, s/he would be rewarded with a nice smell (I used the smell of soto ayam, a really tasty indonesian dish). However, if the player reached the wrong destination, s/he had to smell some really awful smells.

the layout for my smell project

one unit consists of a smell bottle, a card, and some strips

follow your sense of smell

during the presentation

Other students from the course also made really interesting projects.

Ivan made a stereo smell, combining smell of a tropical plant with Dutch woods smell, creating an inbetween world so-called the tropenbos.

Pablo and Juan made a guessing game which combine smell and sound from every departments in the art academy.

James made a memory game with 9 different smells, using teabags.

Yerry made a matching game, where the player has to match the smell and the character of the people in the photos. One was a sailor, one was a French guy, and one a mediterranean woman (if i'm not mistaken).

Willem made an incense kit, a small pack containing mini incense and a mini match to light it.

Jelle made a smell guessing competition, where players had to guess what smell it was.

The presentation itself was 'combined' with meta media presentation, so it really was a nice day full of art presentation :)

for more photos, click here.