It’s widely known that our sense of smell is closely linked to our sense of taste. That’s why kids plug their noses when they eat something they don’t like, and why you can’t taste anything when you have a bad head cold. But tricking the sense of taste can work the other way, as well: smell something pleasant while you’re eating something tasty, and the experience is greatly enhanced.

The Aromafork from Molecule-R plays on the fact that our taste buds can only recognize five basic tastes: sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami (or savory). The rest of our food’s taste comes from aromas hitting the back of the palate. The Aromafork has a small, removable paper membrane just behind the tines. Adding a few drops of liquid aroma to the membrane will cause your brain to “taste” your chosen aroma along with the food you are eating.

Molecule-R’s Aroma R-Evolution set comes with 21 liquid aromas: chocolate, coffee, vanilla, banana, lychee, passion fruit, strawberry, basil, cilantro, mint, almond, coconut, peanut, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, wasabi, butter, olive oil, smoke, and truffle. You can eat your cheesecake with the aroma of chocolate hitting your palate, or go a little nuts and eat your salad while tasting cinnamon.

As you eat, the liquid aromas waft up and through your sinuses, translating into the illusion of taste. If you can learn to ignore food textures, you might be able to eat healthy foods while tricking your brain into believing that you’re eating a decadent treat. For $59 (US) you can get four forks, 21 aromas, 50 diffusing papers, four droppers, and instructions on creating your very own multi-sensory eating experience.

The post Inhale Your Food: Scent-Emitting Fork Fools the Taste Buds first appeared on Gajitz.

When people experience a very harrowing event, they often say that time slows down. The Decelerator helmet from German artist Lorenz Potthast replicates that slowing of time with no near-death experience needed. It is a commentary on our fast paced lives and the technology that defines them.

The odd-looking helmet uses a head-mounted camera to create the effect of slowed time for its wearer. The camera captures what is really happening outside of the helmet and slows the action way, way down before showing it to the wearer on the internal display. An external display shows passers-by the slowed-down action as well.

The helmet itself, as a “reflection bubble,” effectively sequesters the wearer and gives him a chance to escape from the world temporarily and reflect on his relationship with time. The project is an exploration of sensory perception and the way in which many of our natural senses and experiences can actually be reproduced by technology.

The post Shiny Slo-Mo: Decelerator Helmet Slows Time Down For Wearer first appeared on Gajitz.

We are a modern world of multi-taskers. It feels like a waste of time to do just one thing at a time anymore, especially with so much information and stimulation around us constantly. Designer Joe Doucet came up with a way to shut out all distractions: headphones that threaten intruders to leave you be. They are called OneSense, and they definitely give off the message that the wearer does not want to be interrupted.

According to Doucet, the wicked-looking red spikes are modeled after nature’s own visual warnings. When animals see something like a group of red spikes out in the wild, they know to be frightened. When a potential interrupter sees these spikes on your face, they will think twice about intruding on your peace.

The headphones cover your eyes as well as your ears, shutting off your temptation to read, surf the internet or make googly eyes at your cat while relaxing. OneSense is meant to leave you completely alone with just your music, binaural beats or favorite book on tape. Doucet only produced the OneSense headphones as a conceptual design project and has no plans to produce them, but he says he would be up for it if a manufacturer wanted to make an offer.

The post Spiked Headphones Let You Tell the Outside World to Scram first appeared on Gajitz.

For virtual reality or even augmented reality to ever fully reach their potential as regular parts of our society, all of our senses will have to be engaged. Engaging the sense of taste, however, has always been tricky since taste is actually a complex set of input signals. Taste involves vision, memory and smell along with the actual taste buds. A team of geniuses at the University of Tokyo recently demonstrated how computers will simulate taste in the future. Their invention: flavor changing cookies.

To experience this trip into the future, an adventurous soul has to do little more than put on a headset and pick up a plain cookie. The cookies are branded with a simple logo that is tracked by the computer inside the headset. With his gaze, the wearer chooses from seven cookie flavors. The headset then overlays the plain cookie with an image of the selected cookie variety. An air pump spits out puffs of aroma corresponding to the chosen cookie flavor, increasing in strength as the cookie gets closer to the eater’s nose. The visual overlay tells the eater what texture to expect and the scent spray suggests the flavor, resulting in a complete sensory trip that fools the sense of taste. Instead of tasting the unflavored cookie he is actually eating, the experimenter tastes his chosen cookie flavor.

The post A Matter of Taste: Flavor-Changing Cookies Fool the Senses first appeared on Gajitz.