"Listen -- you smell something?" That's one of
Dan Ackroyd's classic lines in '
Ghostbusters'. Imagine if you could actually smell what he was smelling. You don't have to imagine any more, because Boston artist Megan Dickerson has
added the missing scent to films such as the aforementioned as well as a few others. Using scented oils and fans, she has already put on showings of '
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' that allow participants to smell things like
schnozberries and bananas at appropriate points in the film.
The concept is nothing new. Back in the late '90s, a company called
DigiScents added scents to the Internet with a USB-controlled device that used cartridges much like a printer does. In fact, odor tech dates back to the 1950s with something called Smellovision, which used tubes to deliver odors to each seat.
Like many other '50s-era theater-immersion concepts (seats with shockers, vibrating cushions, and, of course, 3-D), Smellovision never really took off. Nowadays, however, theaters are struggling to find ways to capture moviegoers' interest, and this updated smell tech may be poised for a comeback.
For now, Dickerson's scented rendition of 'Willy Wonka' is playing in Boston only, and this fall she hopes to expand her playlist with a few more scent-related films. '
Jackass', anyone? Please, just stay away from the trash compactor scene in '
Star Wars?'
They say that smell is our most powerful sense in terms of conjuring emotion, so it would only make sense that entertainment and tech companies get on board. We recently reported about experiments to
add scent to books -- surely, books and movie won't be the last mediums to try and tap into this most-important human sense.
From
AOL News (AP)Related Links:
Here's an interesting one. A group of US experts have discovered that a common form of skin cancer could one day be detected very early on by simply analyzing scents. More specifically, it was found that basal cell carcinomas give off an odor that is distinctly different than samples from healthy skin, which obviously opens up the possibility for "cheap and painless testing." 
