Raewyn Turner - Olfactory Artist

When my mentor emailed me asking whether I'd like to go to a seminar last Thursday about art in biology, presented by the olfactory artist Raewyn Turner, my mind subconsciously skipped over the words "olfactory artist" and I contemplated not going - in that hour, I could get some homework done! I assumed that it was going to be some presentation about those diagrams you find in biology textbooks. I decided to go, anyway, because I figured that it'd be cool to meet a textbook artist while eating cheese and crackers. Maybe she'd give me some tips on drawing complicated proteins.

Raewyn Turner, however, is not a textbook artist. She doesn't use paper or pixels as her primary medium. She's an olfactory artist - what the heck is an olfactory artist?! - and I never knew such a field existed. I suppose this justifies my ridiculously high college tuition; instead of going to Rutgers, I'm here, with opportunities to meet people (and I'm close to a Trader Joe's. And supermarkets, in general). My mind was blown by this concept of art based on smells. I don't actually grasp a lot of what she did, but she did bring some nifty devices that I got to see close up.

One of these was this... balloony thing, that had motion sensors. When you walked up to it, the balloon swelled up, and a box within the balloon emitted a smell. If you stood motionless, the balloony thing would shrivel up and lie dormant. It reminded me of an eager dog (perhaps a mechanical one).

Another device detected smells and output sounds that corresponded to the smell. For example, when ethyl alcohol (?) was placed at its sensor, it emitted a certain sound, and when cinnamon was placed at the sensor, a bright, tinkering bell sound was produced. A low lull/clock chiming sound represented hydrocarbons. The smells themselves were in little beads in mini jars. I really want some of those beads (air freshener?... it's just really cool to have supersaturated smells), and they're apparently used in the perfume industry because they are concentrated and absorb the specific smell and only emit the smell slowly.

Other art of hers that I didn't really comprehend/didn't see a point in included the baking of a lot of cakes and sticking many colors of icing on them and the tasting of some 50 samples of wine, paired with certain words from poems. Ironically, these are the food-related projects...

I think that as it is such a novel concept to me, olfactory art hasn't found its niche in my brain yet.

Teh Botol Sosro

Aaannndd... yet another reason for loving the Monell Chemical Senses Center! Apart from all the science I learn, I also get to sample Teh Botol, which my mentor tried in one of her science trips (at Singapore...? I think she said Singapore, but Wikipedia says it's popular in Indonesia.). There are varying types of jasmine, and apparently a specific type is used to make this tea, and it is difficult to emulate the flavour that this type of jasmine has. The chemical company that she was visiting was trying to find a more cost-efficient way of making  a Teh botol knockoff.

To her, the tea tasted slightly bizarre. Of course, cultural considerations, along with genetic ones, come into play (receptor sensitivity, haplotypes, etc.). In American culture, tea is... well, "chilled tea" is normally some generic tea, slightly bitter, possibly made from slivered stumps and roots and not actual "leaves". American iced tea is packed with cane sugar, caramel flavouring, crushed ice, and, and sometimes milk.

This differs from hot tea (in which multifarious niches exist, from the British-y Earl Grey with a sugar lump and milk, to the (optional honey) hibiscus, to the bland roadside Lipton).

In contrast, East Asian tea is never sweet (bubble tea is an exception). It's just hot water and tea leaves. The tea leaves stay in the water; there is no bag that gets picked up and throw away while the cream is being added. It's just a sprinkling of aromatic tea leaves (or non-leaf-portions of the plant)...and water. Having drunk hot Chinese tea, including jasmine tea, all my life at restaurants and at home, I found Teh Botol slightly different, because it was a tad sweet (despite it being the "Less Sugar" version). Actually, it's not all that strange to me, because I've had the slightly-sweet Vita Chrysanthemum tea in the carton before, countless times, in HK (I don't really like Chrysanthemum tea though, whether it be hot or cold). The interesting thing about Teh Botol is that the jasmine has a flowery flavour. There is no other word to describe it; it tastes like a flower. It's how I'd imagine flowers taste - airy, sweet, fragrant. It's like a smell for my mouth. It's very appealing in this aspect, for me. I've never gotten the florid taste from hot jasmine tea before.

"Try it on your non-Asian friends",  my mentor encouraged. So, I did! (I was planning to anyway, just to see whether different ethnicities/races have different perceptions). I'm wondering whether it's appropriate to talk about patient data without previous written informed consent, so I'll just stick with A and B even though usually I would just use each person's initials. You know who you are.

A is African American, and A has lived in the US all A's life. A really enjoys tea, in general. [This is paraphrased. I should've taken notes]:

A: "This tastes like bubble tea...or, like, tapioca. I like it."

Me: "D'you think it tastes flowery at all?"

A: "Um...I guess?"

Me: "What about the sweetness?"

A: "The sweetness is great...it's not too sweet/too bland. DELICIOUS."

B is Caucasian, although B has lived in Japan before and... there's delicious tea in Japan. I took notes for this one, so here is what I wrote:

"iced tea, sweet, not flowery, weird aftertaste on roof of mouth, tea residue, enjoyable, but would get tired of it after a while".

So, is taste preference cultural? Racial? Dependent on upbringing (i.e. would B's preferences chance if B had lived in Japan for longer? Would my evaluation differ if I grew up on Dunkin Donuts as opposed to Chinese dim sum?)

And then there's my reaction, which I've described above. I suppose if you've been checking out my blog for a while, you know that I'm Chinese but have grown up in Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, so my taste preferences aren't characteristic of the average American or Chinese.

Yes, small sample size and plenty of confounding factors. This is case report, without a Discussion section (actually, to avoid derisive comments, I shouldn't even be thinking about this as a scientific study. I'll just call it an "experiment" --notice the lack of the word "scientific" in front of the word "experiment". However, I do have an Acknowledgments section):

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mentor for supplying me with Teh Botel!! I would also like to thank the participants in the study for their time (They should be thanking me because I hooked them up with a free drink, and in college, free Calories are highly sought-after).

Endive

Endive. A character from Chowder. I've always known it as some lettuce-y thing, perhaps deep green, with leaves like holly, except more spindly and elongated. Well, I was wrong. Endive is to spindly holly the way a stingray is to a blubbery blue whale. Endive looks like this:

and I never knew.

 So... what do I do with endive? Why would I try this? Well, it was homework, from my mentor at Monell. We're discussing bitter foods and why people eat them, and of course, genetics plays a large role. For example, I personally don't find broccoli bitter at all, but some people with a different haplotype think that it is bitter. My mentor thinks that endive is really bitter, but for me... it was pretty much lettuce. Watery, slightly lettuce-stem-y, ending with a slight bitter note. Bitter melon is definitely more bitter. Raw asparagus is more bitter. Heck, weak coffee is more bitter, in my opinion. See, I love Monell because I'm doing research, sort of, by exploring new foods and applying these scientific taste ideas into my life. Another perspective that I've never considered is this idea, which I've simplified here for lay understanding: 

In a sandwich, there's:

1. Sweet in onion

2. Umami in tomato

3. Bitter in watercress

4. Sweat odor in cheese

5. Boar taint in ham

Let's say I have the genotype +/+ for 1. and 2. Let's say SP has the +/+ genotype for 3. 4. and 5. This means that I'd enjoy the sandwich much more than SP would. 

(Reed, Danielle R., and Antti Knaapila. "Genetics of Taste and Smell: Poisons and Pleasures."Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science 94 (2010): 231. Print.

Reference: DOI: 10.1016/S1877-1173(10)94008-8)

I know it's an oversight, but I've never considered haplotypes in taste receptors as a reason why people would dislike the taste of a soup or a marinade. It just never occurred to me.

My mentor told me that they make the white endive by putting opaque bags over them so that there is no chlorophyll development (therefore, no green pigment). This reminds me of white asparagus. I guess I personally prefer there to be chlorophyll, because I like green. Also, chlorophyll has magnesium, which I would ingest, and I don't know enough plant biology to know whether white plants have magnesium stored elsewhere...

 So, what to do with endive? Cook it? I prefer to eat leafy vegetables raw, though. I just ripped it up and stuck it in some spaghetti with chili sauce and Chinese spiced bamboo shoots.

I also stuck some in a crunchy peanut butter sandwich with dried cranberries. This isn't weird for me because I love lettuce and peanut butter sandwiches. I also love cucumber and peanut butter sandwiches. Actually, I'm sure any vegetable goes well with peanut butter. Yes, even tomato (tomato in a peanut curry would probably be fantastic. I might try that one day).