German beauty studio develops a digital fragrance

A digital fragrance has been developed as an NFT, which could point the way towards a method for preventing counterfeiting

Spotted: First it was digital art, then it was digital clothing, and the most recent item to be digitised using blockchain is a fragrance, which has been turned into an NFT. For those who have not been following the latest trend, an NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unit of data on a blockchain. Like crypto tokens, NFTs can represent a unique digital item, but unlike token, NFTs usually represent a piece of creative work, such as art, audio or video files, “good in video games, even individual tweets. Now, Berlin-based Look Labs has created a digital perfume.

The NFT perfume, named Cyber Eau de Parfum, was created by using near-infrared spectroscopy to record the molecular wavelengths of an actual, physical perfume, along with the bottle and the label. The spectrum data of the perfume was then turned into a limited-edition digital artwork, created in collaboration with digital artist Sean Caruso.

It appears as a photorealistic render of the bottle with the illuminated label and the wavelength data represented as a colourful spectrogram, paired with a code-style graphic. In theory, the molecular representation could be used to ‘decode’ the scent, although there is likely not enough information in the NFT to accomplish this.

The physical perfume, Cyber Eau de Parfum, will have an OLED label that lights up and was designed to have, “gender-less, metallic, retro, and futuristic elements all in one … Designed with energy in mind, cyber provides consistent stamina and the feeling of the underground music scene and the intensive gaming experience. Cyber was inspired by sci-fi movies and a world in which technology, AI and advanced scientific innovations are integral part of our daily life.”

The NFT trend has been growing rapidly, with recent sales including a digital 3D-printed house for €420,000 and virtual furniture for use in Minecraft. But these are not the only digital objects available. At Springwise, we have recently covered a pair of digital-only shoes and a digital dress that sold for €7987 for wearing by the customers’ avatar.

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