News
| Apr. 22, 2024 | Jas presented their work at PAC Lab (Cornell Tech). Thanks Tanzeem, Zhao, Tan, and the whole lab! |
| Apr. 19, 2024 | "Smell & Paste" announced as a finalist for the Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent. Read More |
| Apr. 18, 2024 | Jas is a guest speaker for the MAS.S62: Cognitive Augmentation course at MIT Media Lab. Thanks Pattie & Sam! |
| Mar. 26, 2024 | Jas passed the candidacy exam. Thanks to their committee: Pedro Lopes, Pattie Maes, Tanzeem Choudhury, & Ben Zhao! :) |
| Mar. 16, 2024 | Alex presented "Thermal Grasp" at IEEE VR 2024! Read More |
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Curation
2021 Online Scented Screenings & Talks Twitch and Sniff Along Series
🏵️ Finalist for 2022 Sadakichi Award (Art & Olfaction)
The “Twitch and Sniff Along” series spotlights video games that have incorporated scent as a modality. We’re presenting several historic games (and maybe new ones!) online and offer free mailed replicas of their scratch and sniff cards for educational purposes.
2020-2021 Online Scented Screenings & Talks Scent in Cinema Series
🏵️ Finalist for 2022 Sadakichi Award (Art & Olfaction)
Olfactory art, in particular scented cinema, has consistently been the brunt of dismissive humor. The “Scent in Cinema” series seeks to present works of scented cinema and provide critical discussions of this medium. The events include a virtual screening with mailed scratch and sniff cards followed by a moderated panel discussion with experts in the...
2020 Arts Festival Commiserate Media Art Festival
Commiserate is an art initiative that explores new ways and meanings of feeling in contemporary media art. Commiserate hosts an annual art festival to reflect on how we live, create, and entertain as artists across social and geopolitical boundaries.
Art & Design
2023 Scent Design TMNT Stink-O-Vision Track
Experience the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles like never before with a scent-sational viewing of their origin story. Umbrella Entertainment's special edition Blu-Ray release of the 1990 classic features scent direction by Tammy Burnstock and myself to accompany the Turtles' moments. Simply scratch the corresponding number on your scent card and join Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and...
ACM CHI 2023 Full Paper Smell & Paste: Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Olfactory Experiences
Jas Brooks, Pedro Lopes
Low-fidelity prototyping is foundational to HCI. So, how do experts prototype olfactory experiences? We interviewed eight experts and found that they do not because no process supports this. Thus, we engineered Smell & Paste, a low-fidelity prototyping toolkit. Designers assemble olfactory proofs-of-concept by pasting scratch-and-sniff stickers onto a paper tape. Then, they test the interaction... 🏵️ Finalist for 2024 Sadakichi Award (Art & Olfaction)
2018-2021 Interactive Flavor Installation Perfect Melon
🏆 University of Chicago Arts Grant
Perfect Melon is a “community-building” marketing campaign from the fictional Perfect Melon beverage corporation, presented as an interactive installation. The corporation’s intention is not to simply sell a soft drink, but to cultivate a consumer community entirely mediated by the corporation. The marketing campaign involves a VR flavor experience, in which attendees enter a pavilion...
2021 Scented Game Mod Leather Goddesses of Phobos: Definitive Sniff Edition
As a gift for the Leather Goddesses of Phobos panelists of the Twitch and Sniff Along series, I produced a new "Definitive Sniff Edition" of the text-based adventure. The limited-edition included the mysterious cut 8th odor, two new fragrances hinted at in the original game, a fresh smell puzzle, and a new scratch-and-sniff card based...
2019-2020 Interactive Flavor Installation Download my food
Download my food was a flavor project that features two components. The first is an offline installation featuring vegan jellies in a mini-fridge with a computer set on top of the fridge. In an attempt to use crowd-sourcing as a means of digitizing the flavor information, visitors try a jelly and fill out a form...
2017 Interactive Scent Installation Sanitary selves
Sanitary selves is an olfactory VR installation celebrating and critiquing motion capture databases from the 2000s. Audiences engage with the project through immersive smell and sound and interact with the database in a virtual space. The project sought to question the sanitation and omission of identity markers in the databases, asking whether purely abstract movements...
2016 Scent Installation Big time sensibility
The installation explores the perceived synthetic emotions derived from traditional, domestic flower preservation. Flowers were cut from their stem, preserved in paraffin wax, and randomly reattached with botanist's tape. A thick paraffin blanket affixes the stems to the Pyrex dish. The flowers waft soft floral, powdery, and woody notes from the addition of Dior Homme.
2016 Short Musical Film Simulathon
🏆 University of Chicago's Dean's Fund
Marguerite, a young girl in high school, tapes her day at school as it tumbles into a progressively weirder world. Simulathon explores the notion of the simulacrum, particularly tackling the ambiguity and arbitrary nature of "humanity."
Educational Resources
Fall 2018 Graduate Course ATS 4135: Virtual Reality
Jas designed and taught a graduate-level studio course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago focused on Virtual Reality and interactive immersive media. The course integrated theory-in-practice through VR assignments, exploring topics covered in readings like immersion, metaphors of space, simulation, and telepresence. The class met 6 hours per week with 14 students,...
2022-Present Online Archive Timeless Smell Archive
The Timeless Smell Archive is an online repository dedicated to the preservation and sharing of scented media. The site features a collection of scanned images, including scratch-and-sniff cards. The archive provides a resource for researchers, collectors, and enthusiasts interested in the intersection of smell and modern culture.
2020-2021 Dataset Scratch & Sniff Book Open Dataset
🏆 2021 Accelerator Award (Institute for Art & Olfaction)
A public dataset of scratch-and-sniff books, covering 134 titles published between 1970 and 2020. The dataset includes information on the smells used, their order, and other publication details. This dataset intended to serve as a resource for researchers, authors, and parents interested in purchasing, analyzing, or creating scratch-and-sniff books.
2019-2020 Sensory Education Community-Based Olfactory Research Group (CBORG)
🏆 Chicago Awesome Foundation Grant
CBORG was a collaborative, roving research team dedicated to advancing sensory education and research in Chicago. By embracing the belief that smell is a valuable skill and a way of knowing often marginalized by systems of power, CBORG aimed to make sensory education more accessible and artistically impactful, fostering an environment where individuals can engage...