When processing a piece of sensory information, most of us use only one of the five senses at once.
However, people with synesthesia apparently experience the world of senses mixing together different way.
The condition allows you to see the music, enjoy a tissue when touched with hands, associate letters and numbers with colors and even smell the latter.
And smell colors is precisely what wanted to experience first hand Zachary Howard, aerospace engineer and one of the artists in the software company Autodesk.
To do this, Howard built sinestesia mask used in conjunction with a finger sensor.
How does it work
The operation is simple: it begins when the sensor registers fingers the color of the object that aim.
That information is sent to a wrist strap attached to the mask, in which there is a small processor that analyzes the three primary colors: red, green and blue.
In the mask there are three tubes -each one with different fragrances for each color- to loosen a combination of aromas.
The chip selects the required amount of each odor, and sends the result to our nostrils using two fans.
What smell?
Red is associated with grapefruit, green with green tea, and blue to lavender.
To generate the other colors, the mask dispenses proportional amounts of "red," "green" and "blue" as if they were the RGB LED pixels of a monitor.
The first thing that hit Howard, a gray wall, produced a nasty mix of all odors.
Howard's version of the mask offers a limited experience of how you can smell the color, but the design leaves room for customization.
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