I’m a [Scent-DJ] now

I invented a new… art style, I suppose you could say.

I suffer from two things, chronically: migraines, for which I am on several medications and have restructured my entire life, and experimentation, which I leave untreated and choose to follow along with absolutely no regulation whatsoever. Somewhere between mad scientist and messy artist I reside, constantly needing to just “see if it works”, “see if I can do it”, and the deeply justifiable “make a prototype”.

This has led me to many, many wonderful activities that have led to many, many wonderful results and many, many discarded prototypes and tools. The Japanese concept of Kaizen, literally meaning “good change” and built around the notion of improvement being best at a consistent, regular pace, is like fighting the current to march upstream in full battle armour. I cannot tell you how many podcasts I have listened to, how many articles and listicles and quotes I have done my best to absorb, just to get a little bit more Kaizen and a little bit less Nadia out of my art practice. It eludes me – the call of the “what if I try this…” is like the golden carrot leading me forever forward.

I am a worldbuilder and a story-teller, at the end of the day. Back in the olden days, I played The Sims as a child (the version that only elderly people are familiar with these days), and I would build the houses and create very specific characters and then BOOM. I’m out. Everything finished? Goodbye. All the avatars could go poo in their living room and swim forever in a ladderless pool for all I cared. My work was done.

If my cousin ever reads this, she knows.

Anyway. As documented, I began experimenting with Scent vs Sound about two years ago, convinced on a hunch that something amazing could come of it. And it did! I have worked with musicians in studios creating the right mood and character, I have created scents to match songs, and now, through sheer conviction and zero in-situ practice, I have scented the dancefloor of a music festival.

I knew it would work conceptually. I knew I could bring a live audience to a euphoric state by elevating their experience beyond just audiovisual. I just needed someone to give me a chance.

About a year ago, I bought a handheld smoke machine (like what the fancy cocktail bars have for whooshing majestically over their Blue Lagoons) which I then used to test my fragrance materials on. I ignored all the advice (don’t use this! Don’t use that! Only such-and-such ingredients work! Only use the disgusting vape-flavouring stuff that comes with the machine! Etc) and tested all sorts of stuff. I HAD TO SEE IF IT WORKED.

It did. Told you! But I had to be so, so careful. The wrong material could clog the hose, or burn up before it got through to the fog liquid, or smell awful when overheated. Even now, I have learned that fog, smoke, and haze machines are all different and you have to adjust your ingredients accordingly. But I figured (illogically) that if it worked for a $200 handheld fog gun, it would work on a $4000 haze machine! I was mostly correct (with caveats). So I tried – admittedly, not hard enough – to shop this idea around to musicians in Sydney, unsuccessfully. People were very wary about the concept of a smell invading the space of the audience. I wondered why people assumed I would make an unpleasant scent (??) until I realised that people’s experience of smells on the dancefloor were something like:

-            Disgusting fake strawberry fog liquid

-            Unscented fog liquid (smells like a burning hospital)

-            Matty the loose unit who indulges in an extra pinger and sweats energetically onto people around him

-            Stale beer on the floor

-            Jessica’s 12 sprays of Amouage Guidance/Moey’s 8 sprays of Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa

-            Redbull oozing from the pores of 19 year-olds

So honestly, I can’t blame them for being wary of adding another voice to that unholy choir. However. However!!!!!! It is MY job (which I invented unasked, but nonetheless) to deal with how to manage that clash. It is my job to understand the context of the venue+crowd+MUSIC+event style. The music, is, of course, paramount. But the other factors are mitigated once understood. No problem.

Luckily, I have a friend who believes in me. He likes to go on Whatsapp rampages where he sets me up with people he thinks I could creatively connect with. In one such message, he teamed me up with his longtime friend Louis who organises and builds (!!) the boutique bushland music festival Biophilia. He was immediately intriguied by my suggestion, and passed me onto his stage technician, Chloe. She and I had a phone conversation that started with me offering to create a scent that could be wafted out in absentia, and ended with me coming to the festival and setting up next to the stage to live-curate the aromas in real time. Dream come true, zero exaggeration. I have had friends say to me, both at the festival and beyond “wait, weren’t you talking about this years ago?” YES I WAS! AND NOW I’M DOING IT! THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING.

In order to prepare, Chloe sent me a pin for the location, footage of the festival last year, and teamed me up with Solfa, whose set I was to scent. I listened to Solfa’s entire Soundcloud discography and created four base perfumes that matched all of the above. I had to get a bunch of restock because the fog machine slurps up the liquid like it’s its last hurrah at the disco. I took the main scents and the individual ingredients for tinkering-on-the-spot and took myself to Biophilia.

I am not a music festival girly (the migraines) but it was SO FUN. I absolutely loved being there with Solfa, who was bouncing around behind the decks and doing the most amazing mixes and transitions. The dancefloor filled quickly, and there was a super upbeat boogie going on despite it being the second set of the day and only early afternoon. As for me, I was having a glorious time. At first, I blasted out 3 of the 4 main scents to see how the reception was. They were:

-            Biophilia: eucalyptus and nashi pear

-            Summer dew: citruses and bush mint

-            Sunny afternoon: fig and rosemary

-            Florist ozone: flowershop, the smell of oxygen, cut stems, roses and eucalyptus

The final scent was my Grand Finale so I thought I’d wait until the crest of the set to let it loose upon the people. As I said, the fog machine guzzles the liquid quickly so I was busy concocting on the go. I had pipettes out, scents splayed everywhere, and a vial of cleaning liquid that I desperately didn’t want to have to use because it was 20% vinegar (emergency use only: it de-clogs the hose). Can you imagine? Spraying partygoers with vinegar. Embarrassing.

Said partygoers loved it. There was a fan to further push the fog liquid, and people were coming up to bathe in the scent; they wafted it into their clothes, their hair, their hats. People came up to chat to me and smell my vials, other asked me to scent their hand fans. One glamourous lady said that she was not expecting such sophisticated scent from a fog machine, and gave me her card (she owns a spa in the northern beaches). I had boys giving me thumbs up from all the way back next to the sound booth, and a French girl who looked like a bohemian witch-goddess blew me kisses at the end of the set. Listen, ‘over the moon’ could not describe my triumph. I had live-scented live music!!

So this new… job… it needs a name. Currently, it’s sitting on “ScentJay”, a play on DJ/DeeJay, obviously, but perhaps not that obviously? That people-pleasing idiot ChatGPT said “aromaturge” wtf. “Olfactory conductor” was another one, which made me think of wearing a train driver’s hat to my next gigue. Speaking of next gigue, please get in touch if you want to be an early-adopter of my new movement. I have already been invited to do it in Seoul (had to decline as I’ll be in Bangkok) and you know that once Seoul says something is cool… well, that’s that. Suddenly it’s everywhere.

PEGGY GOU, PLEASE CALL ME. IF ANYONE KNOWS PEGGY CAN THEY PLEASE PASS ON MY DETAILS. ALSO, KPOP. BTS HAS A WORLD TOUR COMING UP AND I COULD MAKE IT SMELL REALLY GOOD (I have already started reaching out to people to see if I can get my hands on the giant bazooka hand-held fog machines they have at Kpop concerts to see how I can get those smelling Smooth Like Butter. I can make it work).

So, there you have it. Taking suggestions for names, and venues or artists you think I should badger about this new fandango. Thank you for reading.