Final Project

 

How it was made
(Roles, documentation of process, development)

In the beginning, my team and I was really lost in regards of thinking about an idea. It is quite tough to incorporate story narrative into designing a project that has to encompass all three concepts of  DIWO, Glitch, and Third Space. Our initial idea was to allow 2 of our members to become the cast and the narrative is about this 2 friends quarreling. One of their actions/replies will be controlled by random strangers’ instructions. However, after consultation, the feedback was that the narrative/project idea is not strong enough. We were so caught up by the fact that there needs to be a narrative, all our brains are experiencing creativity block! We further develop our idea to a game like amazing race/treasure hunt idea. In the end, after some clarifications, knowing that we do not need extensive narrative but more of a kind of goal/motivations. We manage to come up with the idea of “Good Enough to Eat” together!

From the idea of creating dishes between 2 chef’s competition, we developed to having to incorporate DIWO by allowing others to have full control of the cooking process! Furthermore, we used facebook live as a platform for the viewers to participate! Also by getting the food from different places(North, East, West) add-on to the theme of Glitch Singapore! The goal of our project is for the 2 Chefs to create dishes by using both edible and inedible items with the help of our fellow participants in a time limit of 30mins!

Roles

Logistic: Azizah, Hazel, Tanya

Cast: Tanya, Karen

Commentator: Celine

Camerawoman: Hazel, Azizah

Editor: Celine (with the assistance of Tanya, Hazel, Azizah)

Process

1. Gather edible and inedible food suggestions from others
2. All of us went to different places to get the ingredients
3. Prepare any “cooking” utensil that is needed
4. We informed and publicise our facebook page live event and inform others about the timing and necessary details
5. During the big day, we waiting for at least a minimum of 10 viewers before we conduct our live at the designated timing.
6. All “ingredients” and “utensils” are being set up properly.
7. As the live start, viewers were shown with the list of ingredients that we had(we put it up as an FB post on FB too)
8. As the viewers comment the instructions on the live video, our chef followed their instruction to prepare the “food”
9. Live cooking show ends after 30min!

 

Final description of concept
(DIWO, The Third Space, and Glitch, Documentation of research, artwork references)

 

Our team’s project has reflected the three concepts by:

• DIWO: We asked others to help us in deciding the ingredients/inedible items to be bought. We have also asked them to direct us to cook the dishes by giving us the instructions. Hence our outcome of the dishes is unknown and fully in control by the viewers and the outcome are unable to be replicated looking exactly the same.

• Third Space:  We have used Whatsapp, a virtual platform to connect with others to ask for suggestions for ingredients. In addition, our live cooking show is using Facebook as a platform to conduct a live stream. This allows real-time experiences to happen, connecting people from different people from different remote places to join us in creating our dish in real-time without needing them to be physically present.

 

• Glitch: Glitch, defined as a sudden or temporary malfunction or fault of an object/subject/issue. In our project, we prepared the dishes in the most abnormal way by using the rawest material, form and method to put everything together. The dishes came out “weird” and “different”. Something people would never eat or looks too bizarre to be created. However, despite that bizarre making process, the outcome has a certain sense of normality to it. It looks to a certain extent similar to dishes like potato salad, normal drinks, spicy meat and vegetable! This is the beauty of glitch.

The inspiration of our project is also partially coming from “The Futurist Cookbook”.

“Believing that people “think, dream and act according to what they eat and drink,” Marinetti formulated strict rules not only for the preparation of food, but also the serving and eating of it, going so far as to call for abolishing the knife and fork. A short excerpt from his introduction shows him applying to food the techno-romanticism of his Futurist theory.” – ethos by Benito Mussolini

With that concept in mind,  we further developed our project in our own style!

Reflections
(Unexpected elements, Challenges, Take away)

As the logistic person and camerawoman, I had fun in the process of carrying out and participate in the process of creating DIWO, Third space and Glitch experience! Shopping for random items really excites me into imagining how would the end result of our dishes looks like! Of course, the outcome came out so different from what I’ve imagined! At first, ingredients like the rubber bands, straws, and other inedibles I will speculate that perhaps the audience will ask us to cut it in small pieces and sprinkle it on top of our dishes as a garnish. However, they surprise me with using them as tools instead! Such experiences and process really inspire me of wanting to try out more new things and embrace all the unexpected in life!

Also, initially the audience started off with items that are more safe and edible such as the pear, apple, and coke. However, as the video progresses, they became more and more wild with the items used such as the inedibles! If I were to ever do the experiment with my team again, perhaps I would like to try some different element such as by letting the “chefs” to start the craze first by introducing inedible to the dish. Also, I would introduce in more glitch and DIWO by keep swapping chefs in a timely manner to make it even more interesting and intense!

There are certain unexpected challenges such as technical faults. Not all comment in the real-time was being executed as some comments do not show in the commentator’s phone. As a result, we really missed out a lot of good and interesting instructions! However, such error further adds on to the sense of glitch in our project. Which is something I have learned to embrace. The imperfection of virtual space and time. As the saying goes, plans will never be able to compete against the unpredicted uncertainties. Perhaps the Glitch of time and technologies is well represented by what we have encountered in our project here. Experiencing it in the form of time-lag and virtual technologies errors. However, we still have to carry on with what we have and still being able to enjoy the process as it is.