THE WORLD OF Interview, Anahita Mekanik

INTERVIEW, ANAHITA MEKANIK

233886 reborn _v5, 2023

The Tehran-born, New York-based scent designer Anahita Mekanik conducts her interview with THE WORLD OF from inside a department store. She came to Paris for an AI fragrance pop-up, but right now she’s wandering Le Bon Marché with an old friend. “We’re right next to the sound and design section,” she says, “chilling to Scottish Rain by The Silencers. We’ve been inside all day—no sky in sight, which I’m quite sensitive to—but at this moment, it matters less because we are together.”

Mekanik, who first studied linguistics, trained under master perfumers at Firmenich, then joined IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances) as a scent development manager. She worked there, in various roles, for 15 years. In 2018, Mekanik co-founded ScenTronix with artist-technologist Frederik Duerinck. The company leverages technology to generate scent products and experiences under the label EveryHuman. One of their projects, Algorithmic Perfumery, allows anyone to formulate a custom scent with the assistance of AI—using ScenTronix’s patent-pending technology, aka multiple sensory machines enabling fast prototyping and brain-bending aromatic experiments.

THE WORLD OF

Can you explain the genesis of your project for THE WORLD OF?

ANAHITA MEKANIK

When the team shared the theme of REBORN with me, it really hit home. I’ve been pondering [rebirth] a lot over the past few years. I was moved to tears, actually. I trust my tears more and more these days to guide me in the direction of my heart. From there, associations came to me: birth, a mother’s milk, clouds forming and disappearing, the invitation of a white canvas or blank page … blinding light. I started thinking of ingredient building blocks in our sensory machine, how I might combine them. With a project like this, the AI doesn’t necessarily come into play—it’s more about the ease with which you can imagine various formulae. You can use the sensory machine as this fast, fantastic prototyping tool to smell multiple scent creations. You keep adjusting them until you land somewhere that feels right.

THE WORLD OF

You mentioned to us that this new scent is “a white space,” a descriptor that conjures both possibility and erasure. What does being reborn smell like? How do you bottle that?

MEKANIK

For me, the state of being reborn feels like playing with time and movement. This summer, I had the joy of attending the workshop of composer Thierry Thieu Niang. He’d have us do different exercises and suddenly say “statue!” We’d stop in our tracks until a new movement imposed itself. The act of being reborn is like diffusing the density of all that living and accumulated experiences with the lightness of letting go of what no longer serves us … That white space of possibility and erasure conjured sensations of softness and tenderness for me—rice and milk, musk and orris—in tandem with something more vibrant and piercing: dry woods and high-pitched notes like metallic and pepper.

THE WORLD OF

What are some of the biggest misconceptions regarding AI-guided scent creation?

MEKANIK

The biggest misconception is probably the belief that using AI is dehumanizing and devoid of emotion—the scent creation experience we offer is quite the opposite … Conversing about yourself with a non-judging entity that transforms your input into a unique scent is magical! Once people start smelling their scents, they love to share their impressions—why they think it smells the way it does, even if it’s not what they expected.

THE WORLD OF

What is your earliest scent memory?

MEKANIK

The smell of jasmine and rose are strongly connected to my childhood back in Iran, where I was born. I recall dancing around the flowers in my grandma’s garden.

THE WORLD OF

What do you collect?

MEKANIK

Connection.

FURTHER READING instagram.com/anahitatita scentronix.com

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