2017.05.15 档案可以捕捉到整个时代的气味吗？

shiyi18

Can an Archive Capture the Scents of an Entire Era?
A molecular record of smells could give future generations a sense of the past.

By Veronique Greenwood

Yuri Gripas / Reuters
MAY 15, 2017
SHARE
In an upstairs chamber at Knole House, there is a bowl of potpourri. It isn’t an attempt to make the place feel homey to visitors touring the more than 500-year-old stately home in the English countryside, nor is it a modern decorator’s afterthought.

The recipe was created more than 200 years ago specifically for Knole, using plants grown in its gardens. The scent is mentioned in the diaries of Vita Sackville-West, a poet who grew up there and whose family still owns the house. It is described in the novel Orlando, written by one of Sackville-West’s lovers, Virginia Woolf. The recipe even appears in a 1750s ladies’ magazine, says Cecilia Bembibre, a researcher who has studied its composition. This is a smell with a story.


But then—aren’t they all?

The smell of an old house on a hot, humid summer day; a whiff of the sea from over a grassy dune; gasoline spilled on pavement at the filling station; a perfume worn by your mother as she leaned over you. Scents are particularly powerful cues for memory, and they can even define a generation: A study found that those born after the 1960s report feeling nostalgic at the smell of Play-Doh.

Still, scents are ephemeral: A shift in climate or building techniques, or a product reformulation, can extinguish the smells of your youth. If you grew up in the country and move to the city, you will no longer smell rain in the fields. And you might be surprised to find when you go back that they have been built over and their scent dispersed.

Not very much of an effort has been made to preserve the smells that people care about. Bembibre, a graduate student at University College London’s Institute of Sustainable Heritage, is trying to understand which scents are worth hanging on to, what they consist of, on a molecular level, and how to save them. Her aim is to allow others, perhaps many generations down the line, to smell them, too, and understand why they mattered so much.

“A smell can tell so much about the time and the society we live in.”
In a recent study, Bembibre and her advisor, the chemist Matija Strlič, focused on one particular smell already known matter to people: the fragrance of old books. Using it as a case study for how to characterize and record smells, they first placed sensors in the library of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where it is particularly intense. With a gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer, they identified many of the molecules responsible for the odor, and had seven subjects describe the scent. They also had visitors to a museum sniff a bottle with the reconstituted scent of a French novel from 1928 and record the notes that came to mind, from coffee to leather to mustiness. It turns out coffee and chocolate were most common, which makes sense: Coffee, chocolate, and paper are plant products. When cellulose in paper decays, it releases many of the same compounds as roasted coffee or cocoa beans do.

The researchers then created a diagram showing the words that subjects listed and the molecules likely responsible for them, which they call an odor wheel. Belimbre suggests this could be used as a kind of entry in an encyclopedia or a collection of preserved smells. “I’m exploring the concept of an archive of smell,” she says. “The odor wheel would be one of the pieces that would hopefully help reconstruct the smell in the future.”

Thus far, there are few examples of such things. In 2001, the Japanese ministry of the environment asked the population which scents were particularly worth keeping, and out of more than 600 submissions, they selected 100, including the smell of a street of bookshops, of a particular kind of grilled eel, and of hot springs. But this is still a very unusual step to take. Bembibre has been working with the National Trust to characterize some of the smells of Knole House, including the potpourri and even the odor of the furniture wax.

Still, she feels that the decision of what smells are important should be made by a broader population of people. “I would like to have people vote on the smells that are important to them,” she says. “A smell can tell so much about the time and the society we live in.” While many answers are likely to be deeply personal, she wonders if there wouldn’t emerge a pantheon of scents that reflect this specific era. It might include the warm plastic smell of a computer casing, for instance, or rain hitting a particular modern formulation of concrete. Their universality might make a case for keeping them around as times change, so our descendants can get a fuller sensory picture of the past.

Veronique Greenwood’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Aeon, Pacific Standard, and many others.



档案可以捕捉到整个时代的气味吗？
嗅觉的分子记录可以让后人感受到过去的气息。

维罗尼克-格林伍德报道

Yuri Gripas / 路透社
2017年5月15日

在克诺尔宫的一个楼上房间里，有一碗锅巴。这并不是为了让参观这个在英国乡间有500多年历史的庄严住宅的游客感到宾至如归，也不是现代装饰家的事后想法。

这个配方是200多年前专门为克诺尔创造的，使用的是其花园里种植的植物。维塔-萨克维尔-韦斯特（Vita Sackville-West）的日记中提到了这种香味，她是一位在那里长大的诗人，她的家族仍然拥有这座房子。萨克维尔-韦斯特的恋人之一弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫写的小说《奥兰多》中也有描述。研究其成分的研究人员Cecilia Bembibre说，这个配方甚至出现在1750年代的一本女性杂志上。这是一种有故事的气味。


但是，它们不都是如此吗？

炎热、潮湿的夏日里老房子的气味；从长满草的沙丘上传来的一缕海的气息；加油站里洒在人行道上的汽油；你母亲靠在你身上时使用的香水。气味是特别强大的记忆线索，它们甚至可以定义一代人。一项研究发现，1960年代以后出生的人一闻到橡皮泥的味道就会感到怀念。

然而，气味是短暂的。气候或建筑技术的转变，或产品的重新配制，都可能使你年轻时的气味消失。如果你在乡村长大并搬到城市，你就不会再闻到田野里的雨水。而且你可能会惊讶地发现，当你回去的时候，它们已经被建在了上面，它们的气味被驱散了。

人们并没有做出很大的努力来保护人们所关心的气味。伦敦大学学院可持续遗产研究所的研究生Bembibre正试图了解哪些气味值得坚持，它们在分子水平上由什么组成，以及如何保存它们。她的目的是让其他人，也许是许多代人，也能闻到它们，并理解它们为什么如此重要。

"一种气味可以说明很多关于我们所处的时代和社会的情况"。
在最近的一项研究中，Bembibre和她的顾问，化学家Matija Strlič，专注于一个已经知道对人们很重要的特殊气味：旧书的香味。他们将其作为如何描述和记录气味的案例研究，首先将传感器放置在圣保罗大教堂的图书馆，那里的气味特别浓郁。通过气相色谱仪和质谱仪，他们确定了许多造成这种气味的分子，并让七名受试者描述这种气味。他们还让博物馆的参观者闻一闻装有1928年法国小说的重组气味的瓶子，并记录脑海中浮现的气味，从咖啡到皮革到霉味。结果发现咖啡和巧克力是最常见的，这很有意义。咖啡、巧克力和纸张都是植物产品。当纸张中的纤维素腐烂时，它会释放出许多与烤咖啡或可可豆相同的化合物。

研究人员随后创建了一个图表，显示受试者列出的单词和可能导致这些单词的分子，他们称之为气味轮。Belimbre建议这可以作为一种百科全书的条目或保存气味的集合。"她说："我正在探索一个气味档案的概念。"气味轮将是其中的一件，希望能帮助在未来重建气味。"

到目前为止，这种东西的例子很少。2001年，日本环境部询问民众哪些气味特别值得保留，在600多份提交的材料中，他们选出了100份，包括书店一条街的气味，一种特殊的烤鳗鱼的气味，以及温泉的气味。但这仍然是一个非常不寻常的步骤。Bembibre一直在与国家信托基金合作，以确定Knole House的一些气味的特征，包括锅巴，甚至家具蜡的气味。

不过，她还是觉得，哪些气味是重要的，应该由更多的人做出决定。"我想让人们就对他们来说重要的气味进行投票，"她说。"一种气味可以说明很多关于我们所处的时代和社会的情况"。虽然许多答案可能是非常个人化的，但她想知道是否会出现一个反映这个特定时代的气味万神殿。例如，它可能包括计算机外壳的温暖的塑料气味，或者雨水打在特定的现代混凝土配方上。它们的普遍性可能使我们有理由随着时代的变化而保留它们，这样我们的后人就可以获得对过去的更全面的感官描述。

Veronique Greenwood的作品出现在《纽约时报》杂志、《国家地理》、《Aeon》、《Pacific Standard》和其他许多杂志上。