Ab-scaent

"Smell is an epiphany - It directly brings us back to emotions and memories,  which we believed to be long gone.“

- Alice (interview for the "Alone Together“ research project)

We all experience longing for another. Whether a short trip or sustained life apart, the absence of the one we love due to distance is a painful matter. Technology has offered communication channels which cut across vast distances, creating new forms of romantic relationships, which are now constructed across these channels. But what do miss out on when restricting our ways of relating to our loved ones to digital devices, which are usually dominated by the visual and the auditive? Scent - "the essence of the past“ - as Proust describes it, brings back the fragile intimacy of a moment which we share with the one we love. It is ephemeral and instant. As simple as a symbol for the presence of the other, it can hardly be described in words - It just has to be smelled.

Ab-scaent is a conceptual perfume tool that uses body scent as a way of communication between two partners in long distance relationships, living apart in different cities around the globe (Copenhagen, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles and Berlin) have shown that scent, our most forgotten sense, is an essential need when longing for the bodily presence of the other. It turned out that our well-known little tricks of storing the partners smell, like keeping a t-shirt under our pillow, can be just "as powerful as feeling the other person.“ - Alexandre.

Ab-scaent suggests an alternative way of olfactory communication for couples in a long distance relationship - More subtile, ephemeral and emotional than the known channels of communication. Future will show if missing the one we love can one day can be softened by "Renato has sent you his scent“.