We are animals and deep down we desire the smell of the other sex. Unlike the other animals, though, we spend our time eliminating our own body smell and replacing it with secretions from other creatures. And not just any secretions, but secretions from their nether regions. Civet comes from glands right next to the civet cat’s anus, musk is located in the penile sheath of the musk deer, and castoreum comes from little sacs tucked under a beaver’s tail. The beavers smear the castoreum around their territory as a kind of Morse code to communicate quite complex messages to other beavers. Weird as these ingredients may sound, and stinky as they may be at concentration, at the right dilution they have a natural magic.

An Auranone would look like a deer but with jasmine vines in place of antlers

Only a couple of the animal ingredients used in perfumery nowadays ever come from a real animal. The rest owe their existence to a zoo of lab-created molecules and bases: the animal imaginarium. The imaginarium is inhabited by fantasy animals. Some of them, such as the molecule ambroxan, are nature-identical which means they have exactly the same chemical structure as molecules found in nature. The Ambroxan that is our Molecule 02 is made in the lab, but the same molecule is found in ambergris, a substance formed in the belly of a whale.

An Applelide would have a pair of Cox’s Orange Pippinicles dangling from its underside

Some of the creatures in the animal imaginarium are a bit more hallucinogenic. Take applelide, which is a musk-type molecule with a green apple topnote, or Auranone, a musk base with a floral note. Auranone is like a cross between a musk deer and jasmine. If you can imagine a future where synthetic biologists created an Auranone, it would look like a deer but with jasmine vines in place of antlers. While an Applelide would have a pair of Cox’s Orange Pippinicles dangling from its underside in place of testicles. Pippinicles? A hybrid of testicles and apples.

When you see ‘musk’ listed as an ingredient in a fragrance, know that it could be any one of the dozens of fantasy musks out there. These each have a different scent-profile and names like Shangralide, Nirvanolide, Celestolide, Sylkolide. Sometimes you will see ‘white musk’ mentioned as an ingredient. This is the name given to fantasy musks with a clean smell. The best-known white musk is Galaxolide, which to my mind has a paper note. It’s so good that these days it is used in everything.

For Escentric 02 I combined muscone with vetiveryl acetate and ambroxan, they fused together to make a radiant bomb.

But if you use those big musks like galaxolide your fragrance will smell like every other perfume. I would rather leave it out. I prefer muscone, which is the nature-identical musk. Muscone is beautiful, but it’s not cheap. Galaxolide is around 4€ per Kilo, whereas a kilo of muscone costs several hundred euros. For the base of Escentric 02 I combined muscone with vetiveryl acetate and ambroxan and the three fused together to make a radiant bomb that’s warm, clean and cocooning.

Fantasy animals are strange, but nature has some pretty strange crossovers too. Some plants have musk notes, while ambroxan is the key aroma-molecule in ambergris, yes, but it also occurs in the herb clary sage and the Mediterranean plant, cistus labdanum. Nobody knows why these aromas should occur in plants as well as animals.

Ambergris is formed in the whale in much the same way that a pearl forms round a grain of sand in an oyster.

And then anyone smelling ambroxan without knowing what it was would never say it was animalic. It had a mineral freshness and a dry woodiness to it. But then ambergris has a different natural function than the other animal ingredients. It is formed in its digestive system of the whale in much the same way that a pearl forms round a grain of sand in an oyster. The whale builds up the paste-like substance to protect its innards from the razor-sharp beaks of the deep-sea squid it eats. Eventually it ejects an ambergris bolus studded with squid beaks. It will then take years of floating on the ocean for the ambergris to refine its distinctive smell.

There’s a note in Animalis that smells like ‘clean bum’, that’s the only way I can describe it.

Some of the most flagrant animals in the imaginarium are down to bases. Take Animalis, a famous base created 80 or 90 years ago. There’s a note in there that smells like ‘clean bum’, that's the only way I can describe it. Clean bum is a smell we human animals are drawn to, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. Think of a big male fragrance like Saint Laurent’s Kouros - that's basically raging Animalis. There’s around 10% of it in there and 10% of Animalis will hack right through anything else to give the impression you’ve landed in the lion’s den at the zoo.

The wackiest animal ingredient in perfumery has got to be hyraceum. This is the fossilised shit and pee of a small furry creature called a hyrax. These African animals always use the same rocky area or cave as their lavatory, and in some of these hyrax loos, the poo has built up over thousands of years till it turns to stone. Collectors gather the petrified poo at the bottom of the pile. No harm to the animals here, they are probably delighted to see it go. Some perfumers say it can be used as a substitute for synthetic musk. But when it comes to hyraceum I like to apply my key rule of fragrance: it’s not what you put in, it’s what you leave out.

Don’t expect petrified poo in Escentric Molecules anytime soon.

One such crusader for equality is Michael Irwin, who has been busy helping art escape its confined realms of stale museum shows and exclusive velvet ropes. He is the assistant curator for Late at Tate at Tate Britain, former assistant curator for the Young People’s Programmes at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, as well as founder of the online art platform Float, which supports emerging artists by exposing them to wider audiences and connecting them with art institutions.

In the following interview, Irwin discusses the democratisation of art, the museum of the future and olfactory art installations.

‘Blood Sport’, still fromvvvva live coded 40 minute video for the band Blood Sport, Antonio Roberts. Single-channel digital video, 2017

If you could describe your style of curation, what are your specific points of focus?

It came from using disused and problematic exhibition spaces. I never had shows in white cube spaces, so for me it’s about creating a harmony between the space and the artwork. Even if you’re a painter that might be creating two-dimensional work, it’s still looking at how they respond to the space and the crossover between it. It is really key for me to create a site-specific element with what I curate.

Soof, Photo - Krishanthi Jeyakumar, 2017

What inspired you to start Float?

I was working as a curatorial assistant in exhibitions at Firstsite in Colchester and alongside that role I was also starting to work on a program called Circuit. It was a nationwide program headed up by Tate, spanned across several Tate Plus galleries and was all about offering autonomy to people ages 15-25 within gallery spaces. There’s this epidemic across museums around what are they going to look like in the future, what is the museum of the future if those younger generations aren’t engaging in the museum, finding it relevant, or seeing the space for them.

Me and my colleague at the time, Liam Roberts, put on a digital residency, which was a really big success, and then started to put on monthly showcases at the gallery. Gradually it gained more and more momentum and that led through to the Circuit festival in 2016, which was a big part of the showcase. The show started to have a much wider impact.

There is a real discrepancy between younger generations, how they are looking at artwork through the screens, and traditional institutions. Float strikes an interesting middle ground between that. It is democratizing art because it can otherwise feel like quite insular, especially for new and emerging artists.

That’s why we wanted to keep Float going when I left Firstsite. That had been our continuous space and those are hard to come by, so that’s where the digital element ramped up because we wanted to keep the visibility there and keep exposing emerging artists to a wider audience.

Websites can become dead spaces where things just sit and nothing actually happens, so the idea for Float is that the online space is always active and interactive in different ways — whether that’s a young artist wondering how someone who is in a similar field to them got to where they are, or institutions looking for artists to feature. The concept is also to be linking artists with art institutions. We were doing that in a physical way monthly and the website is a digital conduit for that mission as well.

‘FL’, Susi Disorder, 2015

What would the museum of the future look like, where are we headed?

The segmentation of audiences will be reduced and you will end up having a much more inter-generational experience. The collection at Tate is the nation’s collection, and one of the key things in my work here is trying to enable younger or new audiences to understand that this is their work as much as anyone else’s. So it is that democratisation and the creation of equity in the collections and exhibitions as well.

I’d like to think that museums start to become less traditionally curatorially-led in terms of exhibition programming and event programming. The traditional forms of curation and curatorial practice can be seen as quite elitist and exclusive at times. If you don’t see yourself represented in a space you’re simply not going to come in here. In every artwork there is something that someone can respond to, it’s just a case of breaking the artwork down in a way that someone can actually understand how it’s relevant to them, how it does actually mean something to them in their day-to-day lives.

In a digital as well physical sense, there are more artists experimenting with augmented reality, virtual reality that will be interesting to see in terms of how technology increases and how that impacts museums.

‘Archive Remix’, Antonio Roberts. Digital painting, 2015

Have you seen any engagement with our olfactory sense in artwork or any of the artists you have come across? How is that fitting into the current landscape?

Artists have used different sensory experiences for a long time but I think that more and more it is becoming used in exhibitions in terms of full-sensory and immersive experience. The last Turbine Hall commission was Tania Bruguera and she had a Crying Room. I didn’t think a smell could evoke this reaction, but you walk in there and you are hit with this overpowering smell and your eyes start streaming. That was really powerful. It is similar to virtual reality in terms of accessibility in a museum, that the more technology successfully carries through those elements the more they exist. I think that more artists are going to be experimenting with it in the future but it’s that ability to carry it off.

We consume so much through the screen and it’s predominantly visual, but smell is one of the few things that hasn’t been captured, so the physical space might be seeing more of it. It’s harkening back to our primal senses because we can’t smell through the screen.

The increase in screen use, people consuming artworks and designs through their Instagram, Pinterest, you name it, it does raise the question: where is the value in the object anymore? I think that is something, again around the democratization of archives and a collection — opening up those objects, understanding the specificity of the place. The power and potency of the object is here, in these spaces, and it’s just a continuous collective approach to open it up.

The same with smell. It would be a really interesting way of opening up the gallery spaces to something where you walk in and cannot experience it through a screen, images, video. You need to be there too. The archive and the collections need to be activated in a similar way. The value of these spaces need to be appreciated ahead of Instagram. That’s a really tough thing because more and more artworks are being digested in that way.

‘Ethereal Traces’, Susi Disorder, 2016

What are some of the most exciting new talents or general developments that you’re seeing in the art world right now?

I recently worked on a project called LDN WMN. I saw some incredible work being done there, welcoming and putting women, female-identifying and non-binary artists to the front of the conversation, and highlighting these new social debates around gender, sexuality, and carrying that program off on a city-wide scale across the whole of London.

That was incredible, some of the artists that I have worked on with that have gone from strength to strength. One artist in particular is a digital artist called Susi Disorder. The way she is working with coding, constant data flow from Google, Google Analytics and Twitter — it’s amazing to see. It is a weird critique of the problems with social media and the networking sphere that we’re in but also embracing and creating artwork from it.

Another artist is Soofiya Andry, a non-binary artist who is working in education but also for body and gender acceptance. I think that Soofiya is probably one of the most inspirational artists that are up and coming, in terms of the waves they are creating and exposure of their art practice.

Do you think fragrance can be considered an art form?

Fragrance definitely is and can be an art form, it’s just the context in which it’s presented. Art is also a consumer product. Artworks can be mass-produced, printed on T-shirts, consumed like anything else, but the context in which these things are presented in makes a huge impact.

The processes through which scents are made — the research, the concept, the way that the projects are presented — lend it to a much more artisan and artistic concept. But any other sort of fragrance that is highly consumer-based would be much harder to define as artwork. There is a blurring between consumer culture and an art form, fragrance definitely sits in the middle.

Last but not least, if you could curate an exhibition around scent how would you go about it?

There is no doubt that scent would need to be at the forefront of the experience and the concept behind why that is too. It would depend on the artists or whoever I was working with, on how they would want it presented, but you would need to remove all visual stimulation from it to really put an onus on the smell and what you’re trying to convey with that.

In the same way a scent might be used to enhance the visual aspects of an artwork, there could be lighting, steam or something more interactive that could be an asset or an influence on the scent. I would be really interested in flipping that from the visual being a provocation for the smell rather than the other way around. That would be my starting point.

Michael’s Acknowledgements:
Adrian Shaw - Influencing my current work at Tate.
Charlie Bryan - Content Curator for Float and a big influence getting it to where it is now.

floatshowcase.org

On paper, the divide is clear. Mainstream fragrances are those produced and marketed to mass audiences by large corporations who devise their latest releases according to consumer trends and panels. Niche ones are created by independent houses with smaller circulation figures, working to their own creative briefs and distributed at selected retailers. The recent explosion in demand for the latter has muddled these divides, the acquisition of indie brands by luxury conglomerates notwithstanding.

Thanks to online portals into the heart of independent perfumery, scent exploration options are infinite.

As fragrance commentator Lizzie Ostrom notes in Perfume: A Century of Scents, niche fragrance first came to the fore in the 1970s, but flourished with the rise of the internet. Nowadays, sites like Basenotes or Fragrantica offer a vast universe of discussion forums, fragrance reviews and extensive scent directories. Thanks to these online portals into the heart of independent perfumery, the scent exploration options are infinite.

Fashion theorist Carol Tulloch first discussed style narratives, or an expression of one’s history and identity through fashion. Borrowing from this concept, fragrance functions as an olfactorial fashioning of identity. Independent brands have an undeniable advantage over their mass market counterparts for those who see individuality as a core element of this display of self. “The creators of niche fragrances offer different narratives for thinking about our sense of smell, a form of intellectual enquiry,” Ostrom writes. “We live, today, in a perfume fairground with a ride for every persuasion, whether play-it-safe or daredevil.”

In creative industries, an increase in popularity or brand expansion is often equated with selling out or losing sight of one’s original vision. On the other hand, one could argue that a superbly crafted product is bound to gain a large audience, in large part due to the aforementioned digital channels that offer amplified promotional opportunities. While a tendency of disdain towards mass popularity may exist, the real defining characteristic of the niche industry is its unbound creativity, which should be protected at all costs.

Back in 2008, Marina Geigert noted: “The history of fragrance in the 20th century follows the same model as fashion: from exclusivity, high price and made-to-measure quality to the focus on middle market, mass production and democratisation.” If one looks at the infiltration of athleisure at heritage fashion houses, and similarly, perfume underdogs sitting alongside established names in fragrance retail, one thing becomes clear: the game rules have changed.

The defining characteristic of niche is an unbound creativity, which should be protected at all costs.

The niche industry’s tune hasn’t changed, it is simply playing to a larger audience.

In his speech at the World Perfumery Congress, entitled Niche 2.0: The Future of Niche Perfumery and its Search for Meaning, journalist Eddie Bulliqi stated: “Niche is only a symptom and coincidental expression of a much larger and more powerful cultural weather system that is shifting the way we engage with scent…People want their fragrances to make them feel more, stimulate them more specifically and exercise them more intellectually than ever before, exacerbated by society’s search for anti-digital antidotes to electronic ways of life.”

A Global Fragrance Market report states that artisanal scents are the fastest-growing segment of the fragrance industry. After several high-profile niche brand acquisitions, Estée Lauder saw a 24% annual increase in sales. In the digital age, no industry can stay inside its own isolated bubble forever, and the clear demarcations have been replaced with increasing fragmentation. This doesn’t mean that independent perfumery is doomed, quite the contrary. Expressed as a musical metaphor, the niche fragrance industry’s tune hasn’t changed, it is simply playing to a larger audience. Now more than ever, it’s an opportunity to amp up the volume.

You sit in a white, technical environment, but you feel you are being taken deeper and deeper into a primitive forest. You are taken there by the scent created by Geza, green and resinous – the smell of the branches - but also slightly sweet, woody and rotting - the smell of the forest floor. At the same time you are surrounded by sounds recorded in seven forests round the world by Chris Watson, who is probably the most renowned field recording artist out there. You’ve got an Australian eucalyptus forest, the Masai Mara in Kenya, the Finnish taiga, and an ancient English greenwood, all delivered on a 16-channel sound system.

The secret of Escentric Molecules is the way the Molecules tell me how to create the Escentrics. Each Molecule fragrance is a composition of one. But these molecules are special. They don’t have just one note like most molecules, they have three or four notes to them, like a musical phrase. The Escentric fragrances are my improvisations on these molecular riffs.

Everything that is in the fragrance is there because it plays with the molecule itself

The beating heart of Escentric 01 is Iso E Super, a molecule that is like nothing else out there. Everything that is in the fragrance is there because it plays with the molecule. And there is a huge amount of the molecule itself in there too, 65%.

Iso E Super is olfactory chocolate, you want more and more of it

When people smell Molecule 01 they are drawn to it and then – poof! it’s gone. It’s like olfactory chocolate, you want more and more of it. But imagine if you were addicted to chocolate but could only ever have one square at a time. That’s Iso E Super. You can’t keep on smelling it. It vanishes. It comes back. It vanishes again.

That’s where Escentric 01 comes in, it allows the effect of the molecule to extend past where you can smell the molecule itself. It does this by translating the qualities of Iso E Super into other ingredients. One of the special aspects of Iso E is its velvetiness. I extended this aspect with a pair of musk ingredients that coalesce into something incredible when you put them together.

When we smell a strawberry, we think, yeah that smells good. But that’s it. A strawberry doesn’t carry meaning

Iso E Super has a powerful magnetism for many people. They have to get near it, it's so cocooning. In Escentric 01 I translated this aspect through the balsamic ingredients, incense and mastic. Maybe it’s because our connection to balsamic notes goes back to when we first burnt them in our temples thousands of years ago, but we have an almost genetic connection to them. When we smell a strawberry, we think, yeah, that smells good. But that’s it. A strawberry doesn’t carry meaning. But incense has a mystical quality to it, a depth. Just as it added a new dimension to religious experience over generations, so it adds another dimension to a fragrance.

The secret to Escentric 02 is in the precise amount of AMBROXAN™ in the fragrance: 13.5%, the maximum you can put in a formula before it starts crystallizing out of the liquid. AMBROXAN™ is nature-identical. It is the finest of the molecules found in ambergris, a substance produced naturally by sperm-whales and the most mysterious ingredient in perfumery.

It’s like a dildo –soft and well-rounded with a really nice touch

For Escentric 02 I wanted a fragrance that is super-fresh but sexy. This endless freshness is something only AMBROXAN™ can deliver. Added to that is a huge chunk of muscone, a nature-identical ingredient originally isolated from musk. And of course there’s a big slug of Iso E Super.

You know that smell you get when you unwrap a brand-new Apple device? It’s like a dildo – very soft and well-rounded with a really nice touch. That’s the topnote of Escentric 02, plus I added the elderflower freshness of an Austrian lemonade called Almdudler.

We all know the attractions of vanilla, grapefruit, musk, but some ingredients take time for people to understand. Vetiver is one of these. It is a Marmite ingredient, you either love it or reject it. I love it. So of course I wanted a vetiver molecule for Escentric.

Vetiver is a Marmite ingredient, you either love it or reject it. I love it.

The molecule in Molecule 03 is vetiveryl acetate, a hybrid of nature and chemistry. To make it, vetiver oil is acetylized, a process which strips out its smokier, leathery side. The result is a molecule that retains the woody, slightly grassy scent of vetiver, but smoother and more sophisticated.

There are three incredible roots in perfumery: vetiver, ginger and orris. Escentric 03 is an homage to these roots. Vetiver is the root of a tropical grass, orris is the rhizome of the Florentine iris, and ginger we all know. I have always loved the combination of vetiver and ginger. Then I added the third root, orris, to see how that worked. I couldn’t believe how beautiful the three roots smelt together.

A touch of floralozone which smells like a swimming-pool

Hedione is one of my favourite materials, it aerates a fragrance. It flows all the way through Escentric 03, giving space to the other ingredients. The topnote is simple: lime, pink pepper, black pepper and, of course, ginger. Plus it has a touch of floralozone, which smells like a swimming-pool.

Molecule 04, Javanol, is a transparent sandalwood molecule with a grapefruit top note and a touch of creamy rose. As always it was the molecule that dictated the formula for the Escentric 04 fragrance. But I gave it a kick by really maxxing out the grapefruit aspect.

I gave it a kick by maxxing out the grapefruit

It’s got a massive topnote popping with the fizz of hyped-up grapefruit together with blood orange oil. The grapefruit is methyl pamplemousse surrounded by my own combination of grapefruit isolates. Too much grapefruit can be kitsch. You need to accent the bitterness of the rind. The pink pepper in E04 has a greenness that brings out this bitter side, together with a special molecule that has a funky herbal marijuana note.

A special molecule with a herbal marijuana note

Escentric 04 is an extravagant powerhouse with a near-psychedelic freshness. There’s none of that suffocating sticky sweetness of many sandalwood molecules. Javanol, the molecule it is based round, is super-sheer. That freshness is the holy grail for me. I am always looking for clarity, for spaciousness.