Funny as it may sound i did not design my first Eating Experience for my Master’s thesis. When i started my thesis on Designing Eating Experiences i had no fixed idea of the end outcome or how i would pull off and execute any of these. I was using materials and ingredients used creatively only by chefs, least of all as Interactive Media (save a couple of designers, none in India). It was new territory for design and for me a new way to approach something i had been enamoured with for most of my life.
Lucky for me to have a course in New Media Studies then, just as i began my thesis. While we studied various forms of media (print, film, hypertext), their emergence, forms of expression and influence on society. We also understood how they are used through exercises for which we undertook research on the topics of Media, Futurescapes, Analog/Digital and Culture, with the context provided by specific keywords for each student. We then used the research and ideas as content in these exercises to generate manuals/books, short films and hypertexts. In relation to my thesis Prof. Mriganka Madhukaillya and I finalised on Food, Senses and Multiplicity as keywords.
As the final part of the course we were asked to use all the understanding developed in a discourse or exposition in a suitable new medium which would be detailed with the help of the classical Indian aesthetic sensibilities called Nav Rasa. While i toyed with ideas ranging from “IIT Guwahati as a Food Desert” to “Free-Food Maps” what i noticed was that these were all individual possibilities of what may come ahead, whereas there are multiple paths to the future.
For the final assignment, we invited people to a discourse called FuturTenga (Tenga is Assamese for sour), designed as a table of future possibilities represented in the form of dishes, that act as metaphors. The taste as well as the item itself is representative of each scenario and is served appropriately with a short vignette of the related issue or possible development alongside that tells you what you are eating as well as what it represents.
Future scenarios are generally amazingly utopian or utterly dystopian, but no real situation is either completely sweet or bitter, in fact just as sourness may accentuate sweetness or come as an acrid shock, every future reality combines both, positive and negative elements. Sourness is thus taken as an analogy for the unrealised future possibilities that we need to be alerted to. Sourness removes you from distraction and immediately brings your attention to whatever you are eating. The buzz of the tounge-tingling acid is a sharp jab that immediately takes focus and shakes your calm demeanour.
At the table each dish is a different unique sourness and in all, twelve possibilities were detailed, divided into 4 broad categories: Non-Indian, Indian, Assamese and Manufactured Tengas. The audience is invited to participate not only to eat the dishes but to also discuss the scenarios – ranging from Organic food and return of Home-cooking to Globalisation, Genetic Modification, Guerilla Gardening and Obesity – contemplating issues alongside the tastes at hand.
To truly understand the exposition one must experience it first hand and record of it in any other medium – visual, verbal or otherwise – is but a shadow of the immersive nature of the experience. Watch out for announcements on facebook or twitter in case of a re-enactment. Like all good eating joints there’s a take-away FuturTenga and Feedium: a visual document (PDF) about the event along with a brief on my thesis.
Mood By Food 