Sencity London
In October 2014 we teamed up with Sencity, the organisers of the world’s first multi-sensory club night. Over two evenings in East London’s Oval Space, we treated the Sencity audience to a scientific adventure of the eyes, ears, nose and tongue.
In a novel piece of olfactory storytelling, chemists Rose Gray and Alex Bour used twelve chemical scents to take people on journey through a big night out – from perfumes and mouthwash to alcohol, nicotine, sweat and sex. Spermidine – a chemical isolated from, you guessed it, human sperm – caused a particular stir among our audience…
Moving from nose to mouth, chef and food scientist Charles Michel played with our audience’s sense of taste with a number of edible demos that show how dependent flavour perception is on our eyes, nose and ears as well as our tongues. Charles’ taste-bud hacking miracle berries (they make sour things taste sweet) and surreal rubber tongue illusion created quite a buzz.
A big part of the Sencity night was performances from some of the London’s finest VJs, and we worked to integrate several animations generated from brain scan data into each set. The MRI scans were performed in the lab of Velia Cardin at University College London and contrast the brain activity of Jacob Casselden, who’s director of Sencity London and profoundly deaf, with that of Nick Nenov, who’s hearing. Both experienced the same piece of music while being scanned by Velia – Jacob used a balloon to help feel the vibrations, while Nick wore headphones.
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