Sight to Smell : Sound to Touch : Text to Music / Saga of Fungible Senses

 

 

Context :

Ø  Smell-o-vision might be making a comeback — in VR?    …… Interesting Engineering / 09 May 2023

Extract :

Usually, when someone pitches a revival of smell-o-vision, you'd be forgiven if you imagined a 1950s American movie theatre playing some B-movie about monsters destroying a small town while theater workers pump perfumed air into the auditorium, but the latest attempt at incorporating smell into interactive entertainment isn't nearly as crude as efforts that have come before.

Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong, Beijing University in China, and elsewhere have developed a new approach to bringing olfactory sensations to the latest entertainment, only this time, they are looking to enhance the VR experience with a new wireless, wearable device that can provide complementary aroma to match the virtual world you might be inhabiting.

"Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies accelerate the creation of a flawless 3D virtual world to provide [a] frontier social platform for human[s]," the researchers, writing in a paper published in Nature Communication, said. "Equally important to traditional visual, auditory and tactile sensations, olfaction exerts both physiological and psychological influences on humans."

It's well-established that smell is one of the senses most deeply tied to our memory, and it would make sense that those looking to immerse a user in a virtual world would eventually have to get around to creating a smell-scape of sorts in order for the user to make-believe that what they are seeing is real.

"Olfaction plays a significant role in human perceptual experiences," the researchers write, "which is equally important to visual and auditory feedbacks. As one of the typical five senses, olfaction has shown a crucial influence in shaping human lives, as most aspects of daily life [are] associated with olfaction coming from manmade materials, industry, transport, household products, etc."

While it might be tempting to impute the attempt to create a scent-generating wearable for virtual reality immersion, it's not really that dumb an idea when you think about it.

VR is all about plunging you deep into a virtual space that by virtue of the technology can seem very real to anyone who has tried it, and along with hearing and haptic touch feedback, having an olfactory experience in VR would certainly add a new layer of immersion, if it can shake the fetters of its more silly past attempts.

Still, given the power of VR to craft powerful, never-before-experienced sensations for users, there is always room for improvement. After all, what good is there in creating a virtual rose bush if there's no way to smell the roses?

 

My  Take :

Ø  Kissing : From Metaverse to Covid-Verse  ………………………… 05 Apr 2023

 

Ø  As Envisaged : Merging – Morphing – Melding of Senses     29 April 2022

 

Ø  2024 ! – V 2.0 of Orwellian 1984 ?..................... ……………… 07 July 2017 

 

Ø  Nostradamus could have said ?........................................  08 Nov 2018

 

               Extract :

               In twenty hundred and twenty four

               A Sea of Waves will roar,

              Light will follow sound :

              And , in Smell and Taste

              Earth will abound ,

              Brain will hide no more

              Your secrets gore  !

 

Ø  Big Brother is watching us ! And how !  …………………… 09  Feb  2018 

 

Ø  Nightmare ? #Aadhar #PrivacyDataProtection            04  March  2016 

 

Extract :

#  Technology has advanced so far – and continues to accelerate even faster –

     that it is possible to treat “ Content ( personal  / private data ) “ like an air

     molecule , which keeps travelling freely around the earth and gets inhaled a

     trillion times ( content consumption ) by a billion humans .

 

#   With the arrival of Quantum Computing, it will soon become possible for the

    same content ( personal / private data ) , to exist simultaneously at multiple

     places , but in differing formats

     A “ Text Posting “ on Facebook may well appear on different media as

     Voice  or  Image  or  Smell  or  Touch !

 

Google brings 'MusicLM' text-to-music AI to public 

Extract :

Google has reportedly released a new experimental AI tool "MusicLM" that can generate high-fidelity music in any genre given a text description. The tool was first announced in January this year and is now available to the public. The text-to-music AI tool is available in the AI Test Kitchen app on the web, Android or iOS.

 

"Starting today, you can sign up to try it in AI Test Kitchen on the web, Android or iOS. Just type in a prompt like a soulful jazz for a dinner party" and MusicLM will create two versions of the song for you. You can listen to both and give a trophy to the track that you like better, which will help improve the model," Google said in a blog post on Wednesday.

What next ?

Resurrect ( as a 3D Volumetric Hologram – ala IKIN ), in broad daylight, all those sweet ( and sour ) DREAMS , that you dreamed last night ?  Or those memories of past , hiding in some obscure corner of your brain ?

While this may appear to be far-fetched , I consulted ChatGPT re what kind of “ Sense Transformations “ are feasible in near future. Chat GPT replied as shown below

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.hemenparekh.ai  /   12  May  2023

 

My poser to ChatGPT :

Of late there is a flurry of launches of AI tools that transform a text into image / text into music etc. Our perception of the World around us, is through following 5 senses viz; Sight - Sound - Smell - Taste - Touch

It seems possible that a " content " appearing as any one sense, can be transformed into " content " as some other sense ( eg; Text prompt to Music sound )

What are the total number of such " transformations " possible ? Could the total number of " Permutations " and " Combinations " equal FACTORIAL 5 ? = 120 ?

Please generate TABULATED FORMAT having following column-headings / Serial No / Transforming from following SENSE / Transforming to following SENSE / Long Term Feasibility / Whether suitable AI Tool already exists ( provide Name of Tool ) / Whether AI Tool will become available by 2025 ?

 

ChatGPT  replied :

As there are several ways to interpret and define a "transformation" from one sense to another, the total

number of possible transformations is subjective. However, I can provide a list of some common

transformations and their feasibility:

Serial No	Transforming from following SENSE	Transforming to following SENSE	Long Term Feasibility	AI Tool available	AI Tool availability by 2025?
1	Text	Image	Feasible	DALL-E	Already available
2	Image	Text	Feasible	Google Cloud	Already available
3	Text	Music	Feasible	AIVA	Already available
4	Music	Text	Feasible	Amper Music	Already available
5	Text	Smell	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
6	Smell	Text	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
7	Image	Sound	Feasible	NSynth	Already available
8	Sound	Image	Feasible	NSynth	Already available
9	Image	Smell	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
10	Smell	Image	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
11	Image	Taste	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
12	Taste	Image	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
13	Sound	Smell	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
14	Smell	Sound	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
15	Sound	Taste	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
16	Taste	Sound	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
17	Smell	Taste	Less feasible	N/A	N/A
18	Taste	Smell	Less feasible	N/A	N/A

Note: Long term feasibility is subjective and depends on several factors such as technological advancements, scientific breakthroughs, etc.

 

 ================================================

Added  on  02  July  2023 :

Smells replicated using AI

• Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai)
• 2 Jul 2023

key clue to ancient fragrances is art. 

Flowers stand in for perfume; vials worn on the person hint at odours that had to be kept at bay. 

Could artificial intelligence (AI) help scan art and text for such clues, and help recreate the “smell” of a time, place or scene?

A team of 38 researchers from six European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, UK and Slovenia) have been working since 2020 on a three-year EU-funded project called Odeuropa. 

“It began with the idea of using AI to detect olfactory imagery and vocabularies within digitised art collections,” says Sofia Ehrich, olfactory events and exhibitions coordinator with Odeuropa.

An AI algorithm is now being used to scan a vast dataset of books and art works from across four centuries of European history (the 17th to 20th). 

The dataset includes 30,000 images and over 40,000 books in six languages (English, Italian, French, Dutch, German and Slovene). 

The results are analysed by the team of 38, drawn from the fields of history, art history, cultural heritage, language technology, computational linguistics and heritage sciences.

The aim is to eventually replicate elements of the olfactory landscape too.

Historians and heritage researchers, for instance, have recreated the stench of the 17th-century Amsterdam’s canals.

They have also worked with perfumers from the International Flavour and Fragrance corporation to recreate the spicy scent of pomanders, which were pieces of intricately carved personal jewellery worn to ward off such miasmas or bad air.

 The pomander scent was typically a mix of cinnamon, oregano and floral notes. These trinkets are often visible in works of art.

Most on these olfactory histories will be available to the public on the free online Encyclopaedia of Smell History and Heritage, set to be launched by the end of the year. 

Offline, there is a plan to recreate more smells for museums, to add another sensory dimension to exhibitions.