There's a new dating service based on nothing but smell
Have you ever wished you could smell the stale sweat of your Tinder matches before that heavily anticipated first date? It seems unlikely, but Chronus Art Center (CAC) has teamed up with Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne to offer a solution to that exact desire.
In a social experiment examining ancient cues of attraction, Smell Dating Shanghai invites you to trust your sensory cells and choose dates based entirely on the scent of strangers.
According to CAC and some interesting articles on the Smell Dating Shanghai website, there is a growing body of research that suggests a person’s genetic compatibility, gender, age and predisposition to illness are reflected in their smell signature. Some researchers even speculate that high contemporary divorce rates may be related to the overuse of deodorants and the under-use of our natural olfactory intelligence.
If you are on the website, don’t let the promo video put you off - although maybe watch it with the sound muted. Sign up for Smell Dating Shanghai takes place from now until June 8, so don’t miss your chance to become one of their Smell Daters. The service costs 100RMB, for which you will be sent a T-shirt to wear for three days and three nights without deodorant.
Participants are then asked to return the T-shirts to Chronus Gallery, where they will be meticulously chopped up and sent out to other daters. You’ll then receive swatches of T-shirts worn by other participants, from which to select your potential dates. If there’s a match, you’ll be connected with the other member, and the rest is up to you!
Smell Dating Shanghai will culminate in the Sweat Lab, an installation event held at M50’s Chronus Gallery on Saturday 25 June, as part of the closing programme for Thomas Feurstein’s weird and wonderful Psychoprosa. Visitors to the Sweat Lab are invited to intimately experience the smells of strangers, and luckily for everyone, Shanghai should be nice and hot by then.
Sign up for Smell Dating Shanghai takes place from now until June 8 at www.smell.dating/cn. The Sweat Lab will take place on June 25 at Chronus Art Centre.