ScentOpera, the Review

Oh, boy.

Okay. So I went to the "Green Aria" yesterday, the Guggenheim's scent opera for their Works & Process series. I made sure to be utterly scent-free, for obvious reasons. I even walked up through Central Park, to try and keep myself from carrying too much car exhaust in with me. It was a gorgeous day in New York yesterday, by the way, bright sun and just the right temperature to really enjoy being out and about. So obviously, I head right to the underground bunker-theatre at the Guggenheim.

First, I'd better describe the setup. The beige auditorium was small, maybe 100 seats, and curved around a small stage; through most of the opera, though, the place was pitch black. Each seat was equipped with a thing that looked like an articulated microphone -- you know, the kind they have on podiums and speakers can adjust the stem to get the mic in front of their mouths? It was attached to the right arm of each seat. Where the mic head would be, there was a short metal tube that had various holes in it, but mainly just the open end pointed at the attendee. If you looked into the tube, there was a nozzle inside, at the base. Engineering-wise, it really was incredibly unobtrusive, so thumbs up to those guys.

The talk with the librettist, composers and fragrance creator was quite cool, mostly because Christophe Laudamiel gave a really fabulous explanation of the technology involved in dispersing the scents. He started off by creating the scents (which he then sent to the composers), but once they got to the "scent organ" he realised he'd have to do a lot more work. A LOT, it turns out...

Problem 1: Each scent was traveling at different speeds through the tubing to the seats. A diffused scent could take anywhere from 30-50 seconds to reach the outermost seat's articulated mic, so he ended up having to carefully phase the scents in an deliberate order to ensure they emerged at the right time to match up with the right musical cue.

Problem 2: Within each scent, the NOTES were traveling at different speeds. So imagine a second layer of scheduling complexity to the task outlined by Problem 1!

And that's not even getting into the nightmare of having to make sure the scents cooperated when played sequentially.. So basically, Christophe Laudamiel is a genius. Now, to the event itself.

The scent organ started blowing cycled air at first, letting us adjust the attachments; the rate of air was similar to that overhead blower in a plane or bus seat. I figured out pretty quickly that aiming it somewhere around my throat seemed to let me smell without feeling windburnt. First, we were introduced to the "characters". These turned out to be a variety of scents with names like "shimmering steel", "chaos", "technology", "fire", and "evangelical green". But there were about 25 of these scents, and they came in bursts of about 3 seconds of scent and the accompanying musical cue. I have to admit, my nose was smarting from the quick changes, a stinging that wasn't particularly pleasant. About five of the scents were really rather unpleasant.

I got it, though. The scents were definitely in keeping with their names. Earth smelled like soil. Runaway Crunchy Green sort of made me think of snowpeas. Fire was brimstoney and burney. Absolute Zero was a very crisp frozen smell. The Airs I mentally bookmarked immediately, accompanied by flutes and generally being as close to a palate-cleanser we might get.

Then the screens up front broke the opera down into four movements. I can't really outline them here other than to tell you it looked like some sort of environmentalist opera: everything's green and natural, then there's tech, then they fight, then everything comes together in harmony. There was a lot packed in there, though, with individual "characters" carrying out specific actions... I guess what I'm saying here is that there was a lot to take in, and not much signposting as to how to follow along.

Then the theatre went dark, and we were off.

All I can say here is that I think this event was intended for more rarefied audiences than one that includes me. I found a lot of it very frustrating, to the point that I realised multiple times through the performance that top half of my face had tensed up in concentration and I had to will the muscles to relax again.

The music paired up very well with the "character" scents, but it was almost too much to take it. I'm supposed to be keeping track of the music, the scents, AND a story I've only just been introduced to in bare-bones form?! The music acted as a warning a few times for the scents I already knew I really didn't like: a kazoo noise meant that "Funky Green Imposter" was about to shoot out at me, so I'd lean away. Whenever I heard a deep cello chord I'd stop breathing entirely, because that meant a billow of burnt fiery smoke scent. And whenever the strings and flutes paired up I'd lean into the mic and breathe deeply, because that meant AIR.

I actually found an old high-school friend in the crowd before the lights went down and chatted with him about all of this afterwards, when we were back in the world. And these are my conclusions:

The lack of a familiar storyline really, REALLY hurt. I know I write a lot, and so probably have a bias towards plot, and that this was an experimental piece that is about twenty miles further out to left field than any practical application would be. But the total unfamiliarity with the story, paired with an unusual specificity in that storyline that was implied by the score but then emphasised by the bursts of fragrance, made this a very hard thing to knit together. I couldn't keep track of what was happening besides a vague recollective quality like "oh, wait, that scent was technology -- I guess we're at that movement now? Maybe?" Hugely disorienting.

I left this unconvinced that scents can play anything like the roles of "characters"; I suspect I've always thought of scent as an aura or descriptive sense, so tacking it directly to a character with its own (totally unclear) motivations was a huge mental struggle for me. If this had been "The Story of Man" or even "The Garden of Eden", or some other well-worn tale that most of the population have a working narrative to match, then I think I'd be coming away with a totally different opinion. But this entire event was like being blindfolded, spun around and shoved into a crowd. I got snippets of what was going on, and I could tell what character was around me at any given time, but damn if I knew why.

Clearly, I'm far too pedestrian for this sort of thing. The organ itself is a glorious creation, and the scents were very evocative (though there were very, very few floral/gourmands, making things like the fruity "Chaos" welcome whenever they puffed through), and I enjoyed the music but fear I was using it more as an early-warning system than actually listening to the composition as a whole.

I will absolutely be first in line to try again if anyone ever decides to write a score to tell a story, then uses the scents as supporting players to boost the illusion that the story's swallowed you whole. But using scents as primary actors, and then strictly pairing scent with sound -- that seemed too regimented. The scents couldn't emote, and the music was to busy keeping pace to really transport me. In the end, I just wanted a more visceral experience than the intellectual exercise I got.

(ETA: Oh, and also? 24 hours later, I'm still getting whiffs of some of the ScentOpera scents. I don't actually have any lingering on me, this is total hallucination, but it's also sort of unpleasant. Abrupt, too, just sitting in my flat minding my business when suddenly I get a whiff of arid green. Fingers crossed this goes away.)