M Dougherty

Odor Organ

Modeled after the form of a keyboard, this compact device allows individuals to “play” scents instead of sounds. Each of its 15 keys pneumatically releases a specific odor.

Years
2022 (prototype) to present
Medium
Air pump, tabletop device, fragrance materials
Size
20 × 20 × 36 in with pedestal (approx.)
Engineering
Dan Gross, scientific engineer
Accords
George Tedder (IFF) and M Dougherty
Materials
International Flavors and Fragrances Inc., with Travis Aikman
The Odor Organ on a white plinth in a dark gallery: a pale keyboard of fifteen keys with fifteen clear glass tubes rising behind it.
Odor Organ, New Bedford Art Museum

About the work

As a society, our relationship with scent is profoundly fragmented. Scent weaves through every moment of our lives, forming an integral yet often unacknowledged aspect of our experience. Rarely is scent recognized as a sensory medium with structural, temporal, and malleable dimensions.

The Odor Organ was conceived as a tool to reintegrate scent into our cultural and intellectual consciousness as a dynamic and deliberate medium of exploration. It invites participants to encounter scent as both an unpredictable, organic phenomenon and a product of intentional design.

At its core, the Odor Organ bridges scent with sound through a notation system that transforms fleeting olfactory experiences into visible, comprehensible forms. The system's structure is inspired by a pentagonal prism, with each material corresponding to an edge. Combinations of materials, accords, create accumulations of edges, forming distinct geometric symbols.

Fifteen framed notation prints on a dark wall, one per material, each with a single highlighted edge of the prism.
The framed notation system, installed at New Bedford Art Museum

Try it

Press keys to add materials, or choose an accord, and watch the edges of the prism build its symbol.

Accords

    A model of the instrument's notation, in which each of the fifteen materials is an edge of a pentagonal prism. It shows the symbols and does not release scent.

    Materials

    Developed with perfumer George Tedder, the palette balances synthetic molecules, natural isolates, and traditional perfumery staples. Allyl Amyl Glycolate, which evokes pineapple, allows for accords such as petrochemical smells. Patchouli Oil anchors the system in traditional olfactory practice.

    Classical accords (leather, chypre, amber, chai, rose, freesia, muguet, fougère, pineapple, fig) sit alongside experimental compositions such as milk, grass, and metal.

    The Odor Organ's keys relabeled for Sensory Symphony: mint, green, water, acetate, aldehyde, abstract citrus, floral, petrichor, copper, tea, wood, orris, salicylate, tonka musk, smoke.
    The instrument can be reloaded. For Sensory Symphony (2025) its keys carried a new palette, from mint to smoke.

    How it plays

    1. An ultra-quiet air compressor feeds fifteen channels through push-to-connect fittings.
    2. Each channel runs to a plunger valve under a 3D-printed key. The note sounds only while the key is held.
    3. Air passes through a cartridge whose absorbent core holds the odorant, diluted in ethanol and dipropylene glycol.
    4. Scented air rises from a glass tube toward the player, who perceives the changes in the scentscape first and in the most detail.
    Side view of the Odor Organ: clear glass tubes rising from the instrument body, with a framed notation print behind.
    Odor Organ in profile, New Bedford Art Museum

    Three ways to play

    A visitor presses keys on the Odor Organ, leaning in to smell, while another watches and smiles.
    Interactive installationGuests play the Odor Organ at Boston University, part of Scentience, 2023
    M Dougherty plays the Odor Organ as Emily Pope, dancing in white, arches backward across the stage.
    PerformanceM Dougherty with Emily Pope (dance) and Muriel Louveau (vocals), Sensory Symphony, 106th Performance Space, New York, 2025. Photo: Bowen Li
    Night view through the window of Olfactory Art Keller before Symphonic Ephemera: M Dougherty at a table with the Odor Organ, notation prints on the walls, chairs set out for the audience.
    Lecture-performanceM Dougherty prepares to play Symphonic Ephemera, Olfactory Art Keller, New York, 2023

    Lineage

    Septimus Piesse mapped scents to the notes of a piano. In 1922, artist Frank R. Paul illustrated a theoretical smell organ that was never fabricated. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World imagined a scent-organ playing a "Herbal Capriccio." Unlike scent organs built for an audience of many, the Odor Organ is optimized for the player.

    Shown at

    • 2025Sensory Symphony, open rehearsal and artist discussion with Muriel Louveau (voice) and Emily Pope (movement), 106th Performance Space, New York
    • 2025Ether: Aromatic Mythologies, Odor Organ and notational system, curated by Saskia Wilson-Brown, Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles
    • 2023Gateways to Awareness, New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA
    • 2023Noseum, OSMOCOSM, MIT, Cambridge, MA
    • 2023Associations: Symphonic Ephemera, sold-out performance, Olfactory Art Keller, New York
    • 2023Scentience: A Collection of Olfactory Expressions, solo, Boston University
    • 2022Odor Organ: Device Design for Olfactory Education, talk, OSMOCOSM
    • 2022Odor Organ (prototype), New York University

    Press