“From Amsterdam to Zanzibar, every city has a distinct personality, shaped by location, architecture, infrastructure, history and the people who live there. Cities also have distinct smells, many of which emerge from the pollutants their inhabitants produce.
And now, visitors to the Starmus Festival — an annual celebration of science, art and culture that will be held June 17 to 23 in Trondheim, Norway, this year — will be able to breathe deeply and compare city smells, thanks to the creators of a large-scale art installation.
In a network of geodesic domes dubbed Pollution Pods, curious visitors will be able to sample reproductions of the air from cities in six different countries: São Paulo, Brazil; Cairo, Egypt; Beijing, China; New Delhi, India; London, England; and Trondheim, Norway . . .
The Pollution Pods project is the result of a collaboration between Climart and artist Michael Pinsky, who uses a range of media to visualize climate change and topics of social importance, according to the statement . . .
And what does the air smell like, in the cities represented in the installation?
“London is primarily diesel fumes,” Pinsky told Live Science in an email.
“Delhi is a cocktail of almost everything imaginable — crop burning, diesel, rubbish burning (plastic) and dust,” he added. “Beijing is a combination of industrial smells (sulfur), coal and wood burning, which is used for heating. And São Paulo has a smell like vinegar, since they use ethanol for transportation,” Pinsky said.
The Trondheim dome, on the other hand, is a less-polluted coastal location, represented by the refreshing aroma of sea air mixed with forest pines, Pinsky said.”
Read more and watch video at LiveScience.com:
https://www.livescience.com/59421-cities-scents-pollution-pods.html
