AUGUST 23: N-DTCG
things to do / consider:
+ design prototypes/ model: neha
+ scenario and distribution diagram: elliott
+ mobile package vendor/ cleaner?
+ materials thinking, research, precedent, existing, modern primitive, leaf sheath, membrane options
[experts to consult: alina re innovative ceramics, jason re material for 3d printer, food science re disposable, compostable membrane, peter maltby re sonic cleaning]
quick notes : rethinking the non-disposable to go container
physical impediments: bulky, heavy, dirty
behavioral impediments: cleaning, convenience, habit, overall system
other criteria: space efficient, anti-leak, adaptable, multi-function [both plugging into urban food to go networks and home cooked meals, micro-commerce]
toxins + trash associated with current containers
cradle to cradle idea - the restaurants are responsible
size of container as indicator of serving size, american norm is BIG
distribution: who owns it, who coordinates, is there a collection system or is this individual behavior, while mumbai system inspiring, not same economic / labor conditions [of course!], potential for branding, membership
object, within a system, linked to behavior: sort of isolating the object, as a way of thinking about these relationships]
collapsible, fabric, metal, 3d printed, silicone, rubber?
transmaterial.net
precious cargo: transport organs + your lunch
MOVIE NIGHT: super size me, king corn, food inc, jill's, others?
remember: be fools not foolish!
live like you're on a boat
word of the day: angiogenesis
AUGUST 22 : MOBILE FOOD AND GARBAGE VITRINE
Idea: Combine trash and consumption components into one event:
Cook — distribute food to audience — create and collect trash from audience
The food/garbage event is an alternative system. New reusable takeout containers in a fast food restaurant are an intervention in an existing system. Could these two components be combined?
For the mobile cooking/garbage event:
Different ideas about the food component:
- make food (determined by group) and hand out free in exchange for people's trash.
- have participants bring ingredient to make a sort of stone soup
- have participants bring ingredients to create an Iron Chef like challenge for cooks
- have audience suggest ways of cooking set ingredients we bring (Iron Chef with audience participation)
- make food that creates specific garbage that allows us to compose a garbage vitrine consciously as art
- multiple events or single? Multiple ones would allow us to stage the event in multiple sites
- can ACT take out food containers be incorporated? this would eliminate a lot of our trash though
Garbage component:
Presented along with food production and consumption
- vitrine could contain garbage from food preparation as well as audience generated post consumer refuse
- have participants place garbage consciously in vitrine,
- observe people's ways of presenting garbage to vitrine - how much variation is there in this?
- if multiple stagings, garbage would accumulate more trash and have time decay and create distinct layers, becoming more interesting as an object to observe.
Types of audience:
- incidental: stage event unannounced so that audience is not selected.
- invited audience: advertise and invite
- combination
Concerns:
- Is it illegal to give out cooked food without a permit?
- How can we pare this down to be direct and simple in form without losing complexity in terms of content?
AUGUST 10
Sara suggests an archaeology of garbage: Create a garbage vitrine that is a graducal accumulation of garbage over time. This could also be a take-away activity for the audience.
Several options for how to present the vitrine:
- edited
- separated into different categories (recycling, compost, etc.)
From whom?
- One day of garbage from several different people.
- What kinds of categories? Neighborhoods? Or…?
How would we actually present it?
- Vitrine (plexiglass box)
- Mason jars, or other contaners that already have everyday associations
- Any clear and fully sealed container
- Use a dumpster as a “gallery”
- Periodic short installations in public space, otherwise installed in a more permanent place for viewing.
- Could we present it in a stalled construction site? Who has access?
How do we collect it?
- We have 5 gallon jars and go collect from our garbage volunteers
- Like Community Supported Agriculture but in reverse
It’s a way to educate the public about compost within a non-bucolic setting
Our lexicon could be the path of food/cycle of food (the DNA of food):
A distribution system for fresh food, like dabbah-wallahs in Mumbai (centralized distribution system of home-cooked meals).
Mobile systems for food are common in the city. Immigrants start food carts as an entrepreneurial endeavor. There are fancy food trucks.
Could we have a cooking demo on a mobile cart?
----
Ultra-capitalism and speculation drives much of what food becomes available and why.
What do we want to convey? Are we discussing access? Land use?
Communal exchange around food—perhaps through a surreptitious distribution system (like the Brooklyn lobster guy).
Food is one of the most-regulated commodities. (incidentally the least-regulated commodities are art, arms, drugs and humans, in that order).
Working days planned for:
Sunday Aug. 22 and Mon. Aug 23
AUGUST 6 : POSSIBLE DIRECTIONSthings to do / consider:
+ design prototypes/ model: neha
+ scenario and distribution diagram: elliott
+ mobile package vendor/ cleaner?
+ materials thinking, research, precedent, existing, modern primitive, leaf sheath, membrane options
[experts to consult: alina re innovative ceramics, jason re material for 3d printer, food science re disposable, compostable membrane, peter maltby re sonic cleaning]
quick notes : rethinking the non-disposable to go container
physical impediments: bulky, heavy, dirty
behavioral impediments: cleaning, convenience, habit, overall system
other criteria: space efficient, anti-leak, adaptable, multi-function [both plugging into urban food to go networks and home cooked meals, micro-commerce]
toxins + trash associated with current containers
cradle to cradle idea - the restaurants are responsible
size of container as indicator of serving size, american norm is BIG
distribution: who owns it, who coordinates, is there a collection system or is this individual behavior, while mumbai system inspiring, not same economic / labor conditions [of course!], potential for branding, membership
object, within a system, linked to behavior: sort of isolating the object, as a way of thinking about these relationships]
collapsible, fabric, metal, 3d printed, silicone, rubber?
transmaterial.net
precious cargo: transport organs + your lunch
MOVIE NIGHT: super size me, king corn, food inc, jill's, others?
remember: be fools not foolish!
live like you're on a boat
word of the day: angiogenesis
AUGUST 22 : MOBILE FOOD AND GARBAGE VITRINE
Idea: Combine trash and consumption components into one event:
Cook — distribute food to audience — create and collect trash from audience
The food/garbage event is an alternative system. New reusable takeout containers in a fast food restaurant are an intervention in an existing system. Could these two components be combined?
For the mobile cooking/garbage event:
Different ideas about the food component:
- make food (determined by group) and hand out free in exchange for people's trash.
- have participants bring ingredient to make a sort of stone soup
- have participants bring ingredients to create an Iron Chef like challenge for cooks
- have audience suggest ways of cooking set ingredients we bring (Iron Chef with audience participation)
- make food that creates specific garbage that allows us to compose a garbage vitrine consciously as art
- multiple events or single? Multiple ones would allow us to stage the event in multiple sites
- can ACT take out food containers be incorporated? this would eliminate a lot of our trash though
Garbage component:
Presented along with food production and consumption
- vitrine could contain garbage from food preparation as well as audience generated post consumer refuse
- have participants place garbage consciously in vitrine,
- observe people's ways of presenting garbage to vitrine - how much variation is there in this?
- if multiple stagings, garbage would accumulate more trash and have time decay and create distinct layers, becoming more interesting as an object to observe.
Types of audience:
- incidental: stage event unannounced so that audience is not selected.
- invited audience: advertise and invite
- combination
Concerns:
- Is it illegal to give out cooked food without a permit?
- How can we pare this down to be direct and simple in form without losing complexity in terms of content?
AUGUST 10
Sara suggests an archaeology of garbage: Create a garbage vitrine that is a graducal accumulation of garbage over time. This could also be a take-away activity for the audience.
Several options for how to present the vitrine:
- edited
- separated into different categories (recycling, compost, etc.)
From whom?
- One day of garbage from several different people.
- What kinds of categories? Neighborhoods? Or…?
How would we actually present it?
- Vitrine (plexiglass box)
- Mason jars, or other contaners that already have everyday associations
- Any clear and fully sealed container
- Use a dumpster as a “gallery”
- Periodic short installations in public space, otherwise installed in a more permanent place for viewing.
- Could we present it in a stalled construction site? Who has access?
How do we collect it?
- We have 5 gallon jars and go collect from our garbage volunteers
- Like Community Supported Agriculture but in reverse
It’s a way to educate the public about compost within a non-bucolic setting
Our lexicon could be the path of food/cycle of food (the DNA of food):
A distribution system for fresh food, like dabbah-wallahs in Mumbai (centralized distribution system of home-cooked meals).
Mobile systems for food are common in the city. Immigrants start food carts as an entrepreneurial endeavor. There are fancy food trucks.
Could we have a cooking demo on a mobile cart?
----
Ultra-capitalism and speculation drives much of what food becomes available and why.
What do we want to convey? Are we discussing access? Land use?
Communal exchange around food—perhaps through a surreptitious distribution system (like the Brooklyn lobster guy).
Food is one of the most-regulated commodities. (incidentally the least-regulated commodities are art, arms, drugs and humans, in that order).
Working days planned for:
Sunday Aug. 22 and Mon. Aug 23
+ creating a smell experience of the end of the food cycle
+ diagramming, mapping travel path of garbage [garbage land]
+ imagine the narrative of where our food trash goes – could be a good paticipation thing
+ develop a non-disposable to go food container [n-dtgc? time for sexy name] > attempt to use this container
+ other kinds of non-disposable packaging?
+ examine all the different cultural answers to the n-dtgc: tiffin, bento box
+ what is the real cost of a dollar menu item?
+ a take home experiment with data collection or more robust participation by the public [inspired by natalie jeremijenko and her current project using agri-bags to cultivate snails [urban livestock]
JULY 27 : TRASH?!
loose meeting notes from with some annotation
starting from a shared interest in the idea of waste, fresh kills research
waste in relation to:
+ consumption [eg 50% of food that americans purchase is thrown away]
+ transportation [where does the waste go, what is the travel path of garbage, how is transported]
both these books look great:
garbage land: on the secret trail of trash Elizabeth Royte [new yorker follows her garbage]
gone tomorrow: the hidden life of garbage Heather Rogers
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5934530156227758850# [based on gone tomorrow, maybe a little irritating]
how do national priorities play out in relation to waste? how to link waste and real estate?
Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York
notion of the left over, the useless, the peripheral, excess, outmoded [lots of good language to explore]
how has waste been used in a political way?
“waste of food is disloyalty, economy of food is patriotism, production of food is national service” from 1917 war graphic: http://www.good.is/post/old-school-food-infographic/
liberty loaf: precise size and wheat alternatives because wheat [esp. white flour] was going to feed the troop
rationing, cold war, need for stable food for fall out shelters, linking fear and emergency with food production
the sensory travel path of food: fragrant to stinky, the disgust associated with the end, lots of interest in examing and mapping where food comes from – but where does it go? look at the end of the food cycle
a way to balance the fetish-izing the beginning…
the artist sissel tolaas who deals with smells/ odors and the politics of the scent, esp. those that are deemed disgusting. looking at the embedded social values in ideas of cleanliness… she is super interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/style/tmagazine/t_w_1530_1531_face_smells_.html?pagewanted=all
she was part of a conference at the new school that linked scent and design: http://www.headspace2010.com/index.html
[Headspace technology is used to elucidate the odor compounds present in the air surrounding various objects. Usually the objects of interest are odoriferous objects such as plants, flowers and foods. Similar techniques are also used to analyze the interesting scents of locations and environments such as tea shops and saw mills. After the data is analyzed, the scents can then be recreated by a perfumer. wikipedia]
in relation to fresh kills : who is downwind, the politics of smell, very associated with the ‘scar of the site’
food smells and tolerances for different kinds of food smells very coded, culturally learned. can be a lot of shame associated with food that is outside the norms of a culture and the smell in particular can generate conflict, example of the somali living in london who didn’t cook in the house where he rented a room while the owner was there. when he thought the owner was out of town, cooked for friends, went out to get an additional ingredient and came back to fine that the owner had thrown everything away and cleaned the kitchen to rid it of the offensive smells
bbq wars in prospect park – conflict over who can cook where was really a conflict over what it means to use and enjoy the park. some groups see the park as a place to gather with family and friends with music and food and bbq – this was seen by other groups as disrupting the ‘appropriate’ experience of the park as a place of serenity and escape, a place to commune with nature. smell of bbq seen as a symbol of this disruptive use [article by Setha Low]
waste and packaging – could stores be required to “own” the packaging in the same way that the cradle to cradle model has suggested be applied to appliances. people never own an appliance – the company that makes it does, and must plan for how to reuse and /or dispose of parts
mcdonald’s rolled out their composting program – then determined that the food wouldn’t compost
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-01-mcdonalds-scraps-composting-program-food-decompose/
[probably their packaging would compost. babette: does that mean we should be eating the packaging instead?] what is the hlf-life of special sauce?
is there a measure / unit of smell: parts per million?
concern about contagion – smell as indicator. but also smell as linked to class and race “the smell of poverty” cooking smells as invasive – there is no way to block them, intimacy of neighbors [or conflict]
bad smells = bad food
bad smells= foreign food [cultural stereotyping]
which bodies are or are not acceptable
sense of smell is the last to degenerate - survival mechanism
ACT10 DNA
