Eduardo Kac is a Brazilian artist that has always been ahead of his time. In his latest project called “Aromapoetry” he anticipated a new linguistic system.

By experimenting with chemical reactions he imagined “the first book ever written exclusively with smells” – made of 12 aromapoems. Varying the molecular compositions of each scent and placing them in specific places in each page allowed him to write without letters.

Aromapoetry is a new kind of poetry in which the compositional unit (the poem) is made up of smells. The poet “writes” the smells by conceiving the poem as an olfactory experience and then employing multiple chemical procedures to achieve his poetic goals. It goes without saying that, as in any kind of poetry, the reader is an active participant that interprets his or her own meanings to the poem beyond the writer’s original motivations.

Every poem in the book employs nanotechnology