The Holobiont Collective is a pseudonymous, decentralised, distributed network of biohackers, crypto-anarchists, ecoactivists, permaculturists, foodies, artists and concerned citizens. Together they aim to heal the diseases brought about by the Enlightenment’s notion of the human individual as separate and destined to rule over the rest of the biosphere with exponential technology and finance.
The collective’s ethos is rooted in symbiosis. They believe that there are no real monogenetic individuals and that all organisms are chimeric. The collective believes we need to create technology that works with and benefits not just humans but all of the biosphere with a particular regard for the microorganisms that maintain the planet’s dynamic homeostatic equilibria in the climate, soils, oceans, and its myriad complex ecologies.
A holobiont comprises the multicellular eukaryote plus its colonies of persistent symbionts—symbiotic microorganisms (Gilbert et al. 2012).
Taylor is one of the co-founders of the Holobiont Collective. Taylor considers their primary occupation as a human olfactory psychophysicist. Through extensive odour profiling, they have extensively trained people to associate certain odours with semantic odour qualities and concepts.
Odor profiling involves comparing the test odor to mentally stored odor templates, with the list of 146 descriptors serving to jog the memory. The subject has to recall a ‘fishy’ or ‘fruity’ odor to assign these descriptors to an odorant. Such profiling has been performed by a large cohort of subjects and when averaged, consensus odor qualities can be extracted. (Keller & Vosshall 2004, p. 876)
Taylor started with simple molecules, gradually ramping up to complex naturally occurring smells. While odour profiling volunteer subjects, Taylor was at the same time training their sense of smell to a high degree of proficiency and delicacy.
Naturally occurring smells are virtually always a complex mixture of different odor molecules. The characteristic smell of a rose for example consists of about 260 components. (Keller & Vosshall 2004, p. 877)
Taylor has honed their olfactory senses, both in the analytic and synthetic functions, so much so that they can now smell if a person is telling the truth or lying. Taylor likens themselves to the Bene Gesserit truthsayers in the SciFi Dune universe.
Olfactory psychophysical experiments can address whether the sense of smell is analytic or synthetic. An analytic sense of smell would be capable of perceiving the single odorants in a mixture, whereas with a synthetic sense of smell the components of a mixture would form a new odor and the components would not be perceived. (Keller & Vosshall 2004, p. 877)
Taylor worked with biohacker members of the Holobiont Collective to see what genetic markers in some members of the population related to specific anosmia. After decades of doing this research, they were able to link certain anosmias to sociopathic genetic markers in members of the population predisposed to becoming CEOs of extractive and abusive transnational corporations. Taylor then worked with the crypto-anarchists in the collective to create a crypto-olfacto computing platform based on smell which cannot be accessed by those with sociopathic anosmias.
A lowered sensitivity to one but not all odorants is called ‘specific anosmia’. (Keller & Vosshall 2004, p. 876)
The availability of the complete sequence of [the] human genome provides enormous opportunities to relate olfactory phenotype to the underlying genotype of odorant receptor genes. It will be of interest to relate the specific anosmias encountered in various populations with the underlying gene defects. (Keller & Vosshall 2004, p. 878)
Leigh started as a Cardano blockchain (2021) smart contracts developer back in the 2020s. After decades of contributing to the Cardano project, Leigh went dark. He disappeared. No one knew where he went. He was hanging out in the Re_Search Lab in Berlin (Tolaas 2011) where he met Taylor. Taylor recruited him to become part of the Holobiont Collective.
When he quit the blockchain world Leigh saw how computing was dominated by text and the audiovisual interfaces. This allowed the manipulation of masses by algorithms designed for engagement to keep users addicted and glued to their screens. Leigh went dark to travel the world seeking a solution to this seemingly intractable problem.
Leigh met some product and interaction designers in his travels who talked about how other senses like touch, smell, proprioception, and interoception were underutilised and understudied. One of these discussions led him to Re_Search Lab where a designer has been working for decades to build a smell archive and create an alphabet for the nose.
When Leigh met Taylor it was love does not compute at first smell. Together they created Smellkelijk a computing platform based on smell. It’s like the internet with the primary interface of the devices connected to the network being smell and taste instead of text and audiovisual content.
One of the key features of Smellkelijk that differentiates it from the audiovisual internet is its manner of encryption. In the audiovisual internet, securing information rests on cryptographically locking the data. In Smellkelijk, the data is open, it’s in the air so to speak. What protects the data is the ability of each user to decrypt the olfactory data using their trained glomeruli—nerve-ending bundles in the olfactory bulb of human noses (NYU Langone Health / NYU School of Medicine 2020).
Taylor and Leigh have multiple partners and open relationships. They consider themselves to be ethical sluts. In the multiplicity and diversity of their sexual and intimate relating, they both adhere to a code of conduct to ensure consent and that no one purposely or inadvertently gets hurt in the process. They both have a taste for badness in their partners, but that taste for badness is still within their ethical slut envelope of behaviour.
References
Cardano Foundation, Cardano making the world work better for all, Switzerland, viewed 12 October 2021, <https://cardano.org/>.
Gilbert, S., Sapp, J., & Tauber, A. 2012, ‘A symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals’, The Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 325–341.
Keller, A. & Vosshall, L. 2004, ‘Human olfactory psychophysics’, Current Biology, vol. 14, no. 20, pp. 875–878.
NYU Langone Health / NYU School of Medicine, 2020, ‘Scientists decode how the brain senses smell’, Science Daily,
Tolaas, S. 2011, An alphabet for the nose, Berlin, viewed 12 October 2021, <https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/7344/7350>.