2nd APRIL MEETING

Today's meeting started with the discussion of the idea's shape. What it should be? a "cookie", a drop? Only the passing knowledge part of the project?

Being realistic, we haven't got enough time to put a product on a shelf or sell a range of cookies/drops but we don't want to loose the possibility making people really experience the flavours and emotions (not only receiving information) so we have decided to follow a route we have previously considered: developing our idea in a restaurant.

We should work on the idea proposal very carefully in order to have something really powerful, well-structured and meaningful to present to the different chefs we are approaching. We have started to put together some ideas (we will develop them more on tomorrow's meeting)
What we are doing? We are making people aware of the natural properties of certain foods and we want them to form a experiental relationship with food.
We invite them to start a journey; a mental and physical journey, learning about the properties and trying the different flavours in order to experience the emotions.

Our next steps are:

• Select the 5 raw materials (we thought that 10 would be too many but it depends on the ideas we have, we only want to select really interesting ones) and include them in the "presentation letter" we want to give to the chefs. Tomorrow's homework :)
• Contact the people we thought could help us (Valentina's contacts, Carla's friend who is a chef, any other interesting contact etc.). Tomorrow preferably.
• Trying to figure out how we see the experience is going to be developed and placed on a restaurant (this could be changed when one restaurant say yes but we have to decide the best way for us). Should we present all the raw materials on a dish at the same time, cooked somehow in a "cookie", should we present them one by one with the info attached, as a appetizer experience, as a menu?
• Sunday: Close all the doubts, print or prepare the last materials for the presentation to the restaurants and agreed on a possible plan B in case they don't say yes.
• FROM MONDAY: Going out all the time and achieve a YES!! ;)

I have uploaded some interesting info about On the devil's garden book and I have discovered an interesting raw material from the info of this book, the chili pepper. " The chili pepper's violent nature derives from a tasteless chemical called capsaicin that's so potent 1 part in 11 million causes a sizzling sensation...causes the body to produce a host of compounds that help us deal with anger or pain...A South American plant that produces short, intense rushes followed by a false sense of well-being. Sounds a bit like cocaine."

María Llanos

IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN

IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN-A sinful history of forbidden food (Stewart Lee Allen)

"Approximately half of the $19 billion worth of snack foods sold in the US every year falls into the category of "crunch" snacks. This sector increases about 50 percent every decade, but the fastest-growing sector whitin the crunch family are the so-called "extreme foods" which put a premium on extreme auditory effects associated with anger: the splintering of skulls, the screams, the shattering bones, the sound track of mankind of the rampage.
"Taste in many cases is secondary, we're talking food as entertainment" David Futrelle wrote comparing some of the crunch snacks to violent video games. Both create not only similar thrills, but also similar action/response conditioning; just replace the tinny explosions and shrieks the video characters make as they are zapped with the chips' high-frequency roar as they are chewed. While most people accept that violent visual entertainment can inspire real anger, the impact on their culinary cousins is considerably murkier.

According to a NASA study, 65 decibels of sporadic noise can cause a 40 percent rise in hypertension and mental illness, especially among children; other studies have found increased anxiety at levels as low as 51 decibels. The louder the noise, the more agressive the people become.
A person eating a mouthful of potato chips is experiencing an approximately 100 decibel sound level. The chips themselves are made too large to close your mouth around, so their high-frequency roar will curve around your face and reach your ears without any loss of volume.

María Llanos

April Fools' Day meeting

Today's meeting.

There are three of us turn up at Kate's place. We have stepped a bit further into the project discussion mainly about selecting the type of food. As Valentina suggested that we should come up with about 10 foods, however, we might shrink down and focus to only the ones that can deliver our concept well.

The type of food that we need to sort out are those that evoke emotion. Actually every food does evoke us to feel a certain thing but we need to carefully select the one that will make a strong identical reaction. Thus, we should search for the food that people generally are not aware of the properties' or substance's affect of that particular food since we want to EVOKE them and it's good not to LEAD them with any clue in the first place.
For example, to use coffee to evoke “being awake or anxiety” will be too literal.

We also need to come up with the target group. Who would care about this evocative food? For me, an employer of some companies with serious jobs and workers might use our concept by giving the type of food that would evoke joyfulness to the employees every morning. If this could be real, then, evocative food will be beneficial in shaping the working environment.

We also talked about collecting pictures that give mood and tone of the project. This will be helpful in seeing the project in a big picture.

Brief Timeline
March 30th – April 5th Concept Development and Finalize
April 6th- April 12th Crete Product
April 13th- April 19th Sell the Product, Conclude the project, Exhibition Display


Praopilas C.

Abstract

'The project investigates foods' properties and their capability to induce thoughts, sensations and behaviors from their chemical characteristics.

VT

Shaping the Project

Let's say we're able to identify a number (about 10) different foods and match them with a precise REACTIONS (emotions, feeling, behaviors).

We surround each food with a dedicated evocative environment, that tells the story of the food through a landscape, a color, a population..
Have a look at the website www.mindstylemagazine.com, you'll see that each mind style is matched with a collage that evoke and explain it's mood.

Then, we need to give a form to this.
Do we think it is necessary to transform these raw foods in something edible? For example, it is not possible to eat a spice as it is, but it has to be mixed with something else.

- the direct experience
We want to invite people to directly experience, TASTE, our foods.
This means that, with certain types of foods as spices, we need a common basis (flower?), that can be mixed with each raw material in order to create something edible.
This is quite a complicated thing to obtain. These are the options we brought forward:

* cookies (well, a kind of..)
We mix each raw food with a basis, i.e. flower, and obtain cookies.
These cookies should all have the same shape and appearance but different insides. This evokes the idea of the pill, i.e.
One pill makes you larger/
and one pill makes you small/
And the one that mother gave you/
Don't do anything at all/ (Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit).
This is somehow very contemporary I think. This translates the urge of controlling everything that is typical of the contemporary. Pills to lose weight, pills to die, pills to increase your sexual performances etc.






* drops
The essence of the food (and therefore, the essence of the emotion).
This evokes the chemical laboratory and experiments, the homeopathic medicines etc. But it also evokes perfumes, poisons, magic potions, etc.





- passing knowledge
On the other hand, here we believe it is not necessary to literally make the people eat these foods. The important thing is to pass the knowledge and invite people to glance at this new world of possibilities we opened for them.
This means that we can exhibit the foods in their raw forms, but we loose part of the beauty of the game, that lays in the direct experience.

VT

Our Good Reasons

This part is dedicated to the concept. We have to write it very carefully. And this is today's homework :)

Materials

- 10 foods
Be free in choosing the foods, don't think about how they're eaten, their form, or whatever.

- 10 matching Reactions (emotions, feeling, behaviors)
Work on this part carefully: which emotions do we think can be more interesting for the contemporary? What kind of feeling is missed in our lives? This part is especially important in relation to the target we choose.

- 10 matching evocative environments
This includes several images that, all together, are able to define and evoke the history of that particular food and the reactions it provokes in both the body and the mind.

- 10 cookies / 10 essences
How on earth will we manage to do this??!!

VT