Enologix makes software that predicts how a wine will rate in reviews even before it is made. It claims that wine quality can be measured chemically, and a score assessed, much like a wine critic. In order to achieve the high rating, winemakers invest in processes rooted not in agriculture but in biochemical information. Wine making becomes an information science. Care for a nice norisoprenoid anthocyanin blend?
Big Dipper is a machine that produces candle chandeliers by automatically dipping wick into vats of molten wax. Designers Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren of Studio Glithero present new versions of their mechanically made candle-wax chandeliers in their installation at the Panta Rei exhibition Nilufar gallery, plus a new machine that produces individual candles.
Oxman's "Cartesian Wax" is a material designed to replicate the multiple functionalities of living tissue. It uses a combination of flexible and rigid resin to create a building "skin" that evokes living matter and responds to its local environment; its transparency level is modulated based on local heat and light conditions. The work was inspired by Descartes's Wax Argument: Descartes argued that because we can identify wax as wax, even when its physical properties change in the presence of heat, we know our mind has an important role exceeding that of our limited senses.
Japanese designer Nobuhiko Arikawa of Rice-Design has created edible tableware for Orto Cafe in Japan. The plates, bowls and chopsticks are intended to replace disposable paper tableware. The pieces are made from hardtack, a biscuit dough made from flour, water and salt which was traditionally used as dry emergency rations at sea.
Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude), starting from a picnic.
Each sheet of paper is printed with an identical image of a tree, creating an ghostly tree pattern on the surface of the vases.The project explores how paper - a product made from trees - can be returned to its original state and carved as if it were wood. Libertiny also designed the Honeycomb Vases, which are made by bees inside a hive.
Man and Humanity masters graduate, the design academy Eindhoven, Matthijs Vogels has developed a beautiful but extreme way to eliminate food waste by turning it into plates and bowls. Vogels exhibited a concept restaurant in which all food waste would be recycled into sensual tableware as well as gas fuel for the cooking. Vegetable, fruit, tea, coffee and packaging waste is churned up, moulded under pressure and formed into any shape.
In the conceptual restaurant “Sprout” vegetables are grown and consumed in a greenhouse. The vegetable parts that are not suitable for consumption which are normally thrown away in the kitchen, are used now as resource for products like plates and bowls. This is achieved by shredding, drying and moulding the vegetable fibres with a hand press. In order to make the products hygienic and moisture resistant a transparant sheet of biodegradable plastic (PLA) is laminated in the inside. The outside is left uncovered, in order to reveal the material by smell, touch and sight. Since the menu is based on seasonally grown crops, the material of the products changes accordingly, and are therefore intended to be used only once. After use, the dirty plates and bowls are fed together with foodleftovers to a biodigester to create biogas for cooking. The residue from this process is a nutrient rich fertilizer to grow new crops from in the greenhouse.
With proude we present you the of launch our free accessible foodpairing website which contains now 80 food products and their pairs.
- FOODPAIRING -
“Food combines with each other when they have major flavour components in common.”
A list will be made of 250 food products each with their major flavour components. By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made. The way to use is, is just to select a food product like strawberries. You will get a plot where you have strawberry in the middle surrounded by other food products. Take one of those other food products and try to make a new recipe by combining those two. The more flavours food products have in common the shorter the distance between the food products.
- FOOD IS INTERCHANGEABLE -
A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil taste like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),... So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel. The way to use it is to take from each branch of the plot one product and make a combination of those food products.
- REMARK -
This is just a tool to inspire you. You still need as a chef the craftsmanship, the experience,…to translate this inspiration into a good recipe. It is not only mixing two components together. The balance between the two is important.
One particular place to find amazing colors in nature is the Butterfly and lucky for us there are 17,500 species of butterflies in the world.
They use their bright colors to ward of predators by tricking them into thinking they are poisonous (some actually are) or by camouflaging themselves into plants or bigger insects. But maybe they can also inspire us, chefs and designers, to dress up our plates and products.
Through intensive material research designer Anna Bullus has invented a new material called Gumnetic. It is a biodegradable composite made from recycled chewed chewing gum and bio resin. Varying ratios of the mixture result in different textures. Making it a versatile material. For instance for the”Gumnetic”; a street side refuse designed for the disposal of gum and is made from recycled chewing gum. The product offers a unique and practical solution to a widespread problem housed within an innovative sustainable process; the bin itself collects raw material in the form of discarded chewing gum from which to produce new bins. Anna has gone on to make other products that explore both the application of this unique material and the sustainability education opportunities it provokes.
Erin Hayne and Nuno Gonçalves Ferreira of the Visual Reference Studio have completed work on their first collection of thermochromatic furniture, stools and benches that change colour when touched. Colour-changing crystals are activated in response to heat, so sitting or touching the pieces will leave an imprint of various body parts, but just until the piece cools down. Black furniture turns blue and red turns violet, but the variety of temperature fluctuations will bring about a range of shades. The Swamp Collection is inspired by the flora and fauna of the Mississippi cypress swamp, where the studio is located.
Operation Blessing, a non-profit committed to “breaking the cycle of suffering” has taken the age-old technique of harnessing the sun’s heat to cook food, and turned it into a viable design for off-the-grid, minimal-resource third-world demographics. In the Gansu Province of China, and soon in Darfur camps, the sun-powered parabolic solar oven allows the suffering and hungry to cleanly cook and boil water and without firewood, using only that always-renewable energy source: the sun. The oven’s design is also a great example of using ancient technologies in modern ways to address social problems.
The ovens are made of concrete and resemble a television satellite dish covered with reflective mirrors. They are easily pointed at the sun and the mirrors focus the energy on a cooking platform. It only takes minutes to achieve a cooking temperature, which will ignite a piece of paper held in front after only a few seconds. These ovens are easy and inexpensive to manufacture and can be used to cook and dehydrate foods for later consumption, and also to sanitize drinking water and medical equipment. Because the ovens use solar energy, there is no cost to operate them.
The technology is certainly nothing new- dating back to the ancient Greek philosopher Diocles, who invented the parabolic mirror (200 B.C.). In 1515, inventor/artist Leonardo da Vinci improved on the concept and invented a parabolic mirror device to concentrate heat and boil water for industrial use.
But the application is certainly ground-breaking. “In Gansu, like in many other poverty-stricken regions around the world, firewood is as precious as water,” said Operation Blessing president Bill Horan. “There are virtually no trees here, and so little rain, that the only bath most people take in their whole life is on their wedding day. These solar ovens are based on ancient technology and they are eco-friendly - a totally renewable energy source.”
Mike Kuniavsky is a writer, researcher and designer exploring the intersections of high technology and everyday life. People around the world use Mike’s 2003 book, 'Observing the User Experience,' to understand the relationship between people and products.
His talk was a somewhat speculative presentation tracing some of the history of appliance design and how ubiquitous computing may change that. In his talk, he presents the history of blender controls as an example of the encapsulation of knowledge into our tools. He then showed several examples of how networked kitchen devices may (or may not) present a fundamental shift in the nature of how we relate to our kitchen tools:
"Imagine that every time you used this [networked, barcode-reading microwave], it quietly told a database somewhere--say, in your iPod--how many calories you just ate. Then your iPod could query your shoes about how much you had run the previous day. The next time you went for a run, your iPod would pick songs with a different tempo to encourage you burn off that Mac and Cheese. Now that’s starting to get interesting. It is now possible for our tools to automatically encapsulate knowledge and share it with each other."
The vessel in which a liquid potion is able to be contained, takes on the initial form of a thin white disc of plastic. This disc comprises of memory polymer that embodies an intricate structure of cylindrically knitted SMA wire, arranged in a flat circular format. This embedded shape memory alloy wire network acts in synergy with its polymer covering, to enable a subsequent change of form an d transparency to take place on the application of heat.
The reaction occurs when a liquid, heated to 70 °C, is gracefully poured onto the flat form; intantaneously triggering a transformation. At the moment the liquid makes contact with the disc, the edges of the disc lift themselves off of the table surface, the opacity of the plastic begins to lessen, and, as the vessel becoms fully deformed, the wire structure becomes visible through the plastic material. The object has adopted an entirely new shape and appearance, that of a transparent potion vessel.
Once it reaches room temperature again, the vessel gently lies down and becomes a nondescript circular mat. Concept: Carl De Smet.
Tara Donovan (b. 1969) is an installation artist who uses materials such as scotch tape, styrofoam cups, and drinking straws to create large scale sculptures that often have a biomorphic feel. All of her work must be assembled and disassembled, sometimes an extremely tedious process. Her work was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennal and the All Soviet Exhibition and in a recent edition of Art News magazine. She is also the recipient of the Alexander Calder Award and a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University. Most recently her work was featured in a solo exhibition in the Pace Gallery in New York.
Born in 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, Erwin Wurm has always been involved in a question and answer game about sculpture and the way it is constituted. A multifaceted oeuvre has emerged over twenty-five years, which can be regarded as a continual investigation about the definition of sculpture. For Wurm, who is one of the most successful contemporary Austrian artists, actions, written or drawn instructions or even thoughts can become sculpture. This retrospective show presents for the first time, and on such a large scale, Wurm’s comprehensive oeuvre, which includes all forms of media and systems of reference.
For Wurm, one of the most successful contemporary artists, anything can become sculpture: actions, written or drawn instructions, or even a thought. His art often treats elementary as well as banal life needs and actions, as well as their perversion, as can be expressed in physical deformations. The artist explores issues such as the thinness craze and obesity, fashion, advertising, the cult of consumerism, whose central fetishes include the private home as well the car. The exhibition shows with more than 400 drawings, videos, photographs, and sculptures, the most expansive show of the artist's work to date.
David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of ‘The Living’ Architects presented their recent work at the Interactive Architecture event which Ruairi Glynn organised at Eyebeam last month. They have just released 2 lovely little books called ‘Life Size‘ 1 & 2 which explore the possibility of creating open source design processes. The first volume of Life Size includes ‘DIY directions for making a responsive kinetic system, an energy self-sufficient display, and a collapsible framing structure out of weak materials.’ & the second volume of this series includes essays by Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Livia Corona, Holly Kretschmar, Seth Mnookin, William Wu and SISYPHUS.
Whats most interesting for me about David and Soo-ins work is their methodology they call "flash research," which they define as an architectural research project with a budget under $1000 and a ninety-day timeline, expected to result in a fully functioning, 1:1 scale prototype. To me this seems a challenging approach that forces you to consider low tech solutions rather than spending a fortune on answering problems often with unsustainable answers.
David and Soo-in run a graduate class at Columbia Architecture school where with their students, they continue to experiment with these ideas of rapid experimentation often in the context of responsive & kinetic spatial design. Check out their website where you can find out more about their projects such as living River Glow, a network of pods that act as an interface between the water quality of the river and local inhabitants awareness of environmental conditions and Living Glass, a silent transforming and transparent surface that responds to inhabitants proximity.
A feast...the Materia newsletter for february 2007 entered our mailbox, packed full of new materials, events and information. A Food for Design quickpick :
:: Noodle block : Lauren Moriarty designs and manufactures products which explore the potential of pattern, materials and 3-dimensional textiles. Her Noodle Block range of lighting, cushions and interior cubes came from a fascination for the effects that can be created when a pattern is put into repeat. Each structure can be squashed and bounces back to its original form. These are products with great visual and tactile appeal.
The Rubber Lace Panels reference the structure and patterns found in traditional lace and combine these with the use of laser cutting and industrial materials to create new textile forms.
:: Abalone in Lacquer : These panels are a product of a long history of decorative inlay technique indigenous to Vietnam. Duck egg shells are roasted, crushed and placed into a chestnut lacquer matrix on a marine plywood substrate. This composite is then rubbed by hand into a smooth polished finish under running water. This process takes 50 days to complete from start to finish. Abalone shells in the same chestnut lacquer matrix are also available. Colors include deep red, blue, and red dot . Applications include vertical and horizontal surfacing.
2 microscopic technologies to look at food. The first technique is Scanning electron microscopy of hydrated specimens. It was done using small specimens (less than 4 mm in diameter) placed directly in the well of the cooled microscope stage maintained at +1°C and a pressure of 0.6 Torr in the chamber. The cut surface of each specimen was sealed with colloidal graphite to prevent water loss. The image of cauliflower at left was obtained at 0.6 Torr and 1°C.
The second technique is Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy. The microscopic structure of food significantly affects its processing characteristics, flavour properties and texture. Food microstructure studies thus provide a key to understanding, and therefore controlling, food behaviour. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is one of the most useful microscopy techniques for studying the microstructure of a wide variety of foods, in particular dairy products. A primary feature of the CLSM is its ability to "optically section" through samples, giving a 3-dimensional view of a food product with minimal sample disturbance. The second photo is of Milk chocolate Dual-stained image showing protein (green), fat (blue), cocoa solids (red). and sugar crystals (dark green/black). Sugar crystal sizes range from 5 to 25 µm.
Food for design wants to be an open source for design, food and science cross-over. We are not interested in creating hypes, but in long term co-operations, where everyone benefits. Promoting quality and collective creativity are the things that count... So please take a seat and have a bite! Best view [res: 1024 x 768] x [browser: firefox]
_ random newsletter
_news
_m[eat]ing 003
17.03.2007::MATERIALS ::
Food for design was invited by the Meat & Fresh expo and will install a creative food laboratory at the rambla during the fair,
where people can find inspiration towards form and taste.
[+ more]
_m[eat]ing 002
18.11.2006::MATERIALS ::
A feast of surfaces, textures, colors and other sensorial elements, using a large palette of food materials.
The objective is to inspire new uses for food materials and provoke new applications within a design context.
[+ more]
_seminar
20.09.2006::MG SEMINAR IN BELGIUM ::
This seminar [ 20 november 2006 ] is organised by the innovation and knowledge centre of food for every one who is interested in food science, technology and cooking processes. This can be chefs, scientists, recipe developers, foodies,...
The guest speakers tell and demonstrate how food science and technology can inspire gastronomy...
[+ english][+ dutch]
_manifesto 001
03.02.2006::FOOD for design::
The first aim of this project is to explore and understand the physicochemical properties of materials / ingredients and apply this under-standing when designing.
_manifesto 002
28.01.2006::food for DESIGN::
A different way of thinking : abandoning the role of "creator" and "descending" to the role of a participant playing within the rules of an experimental process.
All experiments come into being as a result of self-formation processes.
_manifesto 001
22.01.2006::food FOR design::
In exploring the materials the main focus lays on the food as in exploring the structure the primary focus lays on the process.
The goal of this cross-fertilisation project is to add more senses / experience to design, it is a way of sustainable, random, natural thinking to in-spire others, giving food for the future.
