Remember the computer room? My family never had a room entirely dedicated to a computer, but my parents did stick two desktops in our finished basement, out of sight from the rest of our home. I would sneak down there to play pirated copies of DOS games like Princess Maker 2 when I stayed home sick from school. Eventually, the two side-by-side computers would fill the small space with a pungent scent of hot metal, dust, and mousepads. Cero, a perfume by agar olfactory, replicates this scent perfectly.
Cero is part of a perfume series that explores ecological collapse. It includes perfumes that reflect sentient plastics, the fetishization of the smell of fresh bread, the musk of the mycelium network, and eventually the damp, wet earth lush with plant life and bereft of human beings. But it begins with Cero, which is meant to evoke the scent of 1999, when the computer had its own room instead of living in your pocket. At that point in time, the computer—and all the knowledge to which it was a portal—was localized to a single place, creating the possibility for nostalgia. It reminds me of DJ Ninajirachi’s sonic equivalent, her album I Love My Computer, but with cultural touchstones meant for people just a little bit older than her. When she sings about a secret song that sounds like an iPod Touch with a crack in the screen, it evokes in me a memory of dial-up modems and anime fansites on Angelfire.
What really strikes me about Cero is that it resists prettifying that scent. I love how wearing it makes me feel transported into a dark basement where I could discover new things—but the note of dust is so pronounced that it often makes me sneeze. It feels like sticking your head directly into an old Dell computer that has never been cleaned. It smells like minerals with electricity running through them, like rubber, like plastic. The Ghost In The Shell scent from L’Etat Libre D’Orange also tries to evoke these computer-y smells, focusing mostly on the metallic side of things, but it mixes the scents of latex and silicon with powders and florals. Comparatively, the agar olfactory scent attempts to be a purer reflection, more than just a gesture towards a glimmering nostalgic image.
The most intense aspects of Cero, the smell of mousepads especially, die down throughout the day. But that smell of metal and dust clings to my skin, and eventually I find it comforting to wear, to smell as I gesticulate and talk. The smell of the computer room is a hopeful smell. It’s the smell of childhood, for me. It’s the smell of possibility, of a time when using the computer was neither a necessity nor something in control of a ruling class that wants us all dependent on them. It is also the first scent in agar olfactory’s cycle of complete human extinction. Perhaps I love wearing it also as a warning.
Chris Person
