Good Enough To Eat

Inspired by our artist reference, The Futuristic Cookbook, my group and I decided to create a delicious-non-edible-meal with the help of our audiences.

We asked our audiences what edible and non-edible ingredients would they like to see in our dish. Some of the ingredients suggested by them are condoms, coke, my little pony and pear. Then we went to different location, North and East of Singapore to get the ingredients.

During the live, the chefs will only follow the instructions given my the audiences and create a new dish with the ingredients that we have.

ideation

At first, we though of having 2 actors arguing with each other in a void deck. One of them will be given instructions on what to say and what to do by one of our group member. The other one is free to do whatever she likes. The player task is to calm both of them down.

However it seems lacking in terms of motivation for the player to complete the task.

So I went to reflect on our first ideation, and try to come out with something before discussing again with my members. Since this project is called Glitch Singapore, I thought of injected some local aspect into this project which is the use of tissue paper in Hawker Centre. One of the function of the tissue paper is to chop the table. So I thought of making something out of the tissue paper at the Hawker Centre then make it live. The challenging part about this idea was to think and create something meaningful that relates back to local, with the use of tissue paper in a Hawker Centre

Another idea is based on my childhood experience. It is about a school boy who just finished school, he has some errand to do but he has to reach home within 30 minutes as his strict mum is waiting for him. Some of the errands will be:

  • playing at the playground with his friend
  • buying a snack
  • copy his friend’s homework
  • buy some items that his mum told him.

So before the game start the audience can arrange which errands they want to do first. We did not go with this idea because it a close conclusion, nothing unexpected and the third space is missing.

The last idea that I thought of was a BINGO game among the resident. The player will be given a bingo paper and it will happened in a specific neighbourhood, example only in Jurong West neighbourhood. So before the game start, the player will select on of the option. Example: A runner who is wearing ________. Options given are:

  1. White Top
  2. National Service Singlet
  3. Not wearing a top; half naked.

To complete this, there’s an answer in the Bingo set itself. This game requires crowdsourcing in a way, however there is also a close conclusion.

Image taken from Google

So when me and group members meet up to discuss again, I told them that I wanted to inject some localise aspect in it. Then they had already have an idea about original fairytales that are actually not very princessy but they are dark and disturbing. An example is the Cinderella story, where the step sister cut her toes to fit into the glass slippers.

Image taken from Google

So I suggested that maybe we could use Singapore’s myth, example is the Redhill or The Sister Island. Then picked out certain element of it and create our narrative. However the ideas that we throw in while discussing, only focuses on the narrative without inserting Glitch, Third space and DIWO.

That’s when we decided to rethink about having a simple narrative, with an unexpected outcome, that can happened in a few different locations at a same time.

Hence, we decided to have a cook show, playing with food, with reference from The Futuristic Cookbook.

Artist Reference

Jian Kan Tang 2018: The objective is performance art is to discuss cultural hybridity, through the use of rice and potatoes, the former embodies Asian culture and the later western culture. During the performance, there are 8 bowls containing potatoes and rice. Audience has to follow a set of instructions given by the artist in the page. Some of the instructions were no undress of the artist, no consumption of food, not abusing the artist. This performance art was suppose to happened in a physical place, but due to the weather, the performance was held in the Facebook live. So audience will comment during the live to interact with the artist. 

The Futurist Cookbook by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He is an Italian poet and where one of the founder of Futuristic movement. In short, this book about art and cooking. And the believed that people “think, dream and act according to what they eat and drink”. There were 11 requirements of created a Futurist recipe. Some of it are

  • Absolute originality in the food
  • The invention of appetizing food sculptures, whose original harmony of form and color feeds the eyes and excites the imagination before it tempts the lips.

Futuristic food is not meant to be eaten, but experienced by the eyes and nose. Example of a recipe is to deep-fried the red rose heads in full bloom, and it is called Diabolical Rose.

Process

Firstly,  we ask the audience what ingredients would they want to put in our dish, it can edible and inedible. Then we went to different location to get the ingredients.

Location

So some of the ingredients brought are: Coke, coffee, condom, container, earbud, rubber band, my little pony, pear and many more.

Before going on live, we post a description of our project with a short narrative and a picture of our ingredients on our Facebook page. We didn’t not useknife and cutting board, as we intentionally want to replace it penknife and cutting mat that we always use in school.

Screenshot of our post

During the live, audience will give instructions to the chefs and the chefs will make the dish according to the instructions.

For our chef to view the comment
Our Chefs at work
Screen shot of our live

Lastly, to end this, we serve our dishes our customers.

Our customers
Role & Responsibilities

Pre-production: 

Getting edible ingredients from the audience: Hazel, Tanya and Karen.

Getting inedible ingredients from the audience: Celine and Azizah

Facebook page: created by Celine, titled by everyone and visuals by Azizah

Production: 

My group members working hard

Cast/chefsTanya and Karen

Facebook Live CommentatorCeline

Assistances & Camerawoman for documentation: Hazel and Azizah

 

 

Post-Production:

Video EditorCeline, with the assistance of Hazel, Tanya and Azizah.

Unexpected Element
Outcome of our dish

Firstly, the outcome itself was unexpected as we didn’t know that we could create 2 dishes with 2 drinks with the ingredients we had.

The process of doing it was also surprisingly different of what we, as a group, thought of. As we did not thought of using condoms as an icing. Here are some of the comments from the audience:

  • Use the straw to stab the pickle and make little pickle cylinders to garnish the paste
  • crush chalk into powder and mush with chilli sauce
  • dip the cotton buds into wasabi
  • Mix wasabi with with apple mix in the condom!!!!
  • dice the candles and throw it on the salad

We also didn’t expect the first round to be successful, as we thought that we might need to do another round of it.

Reflection

One of our audience for this project is my mum. Her view of this project is different from the audience, as she did not comment at all. So I asked her and she said that she did not understand what we were doing. And she was also shocked that I took some of the ingredients from home. So from this, I learnt that some people have different perspective towards this project. As most audience of my age will find this exciting, but audience like my mum, would not find this interesting.

I did not have any problems working with my team member. As we were able to work together and divide the work equally. Although, sometimes a person’s work does not meet the group standard, we as a group will try and figure it out together.

In this final project, I was able to apply what I have learnt during the lectures, discussions and micro-projects to combine it and create something new. I think that the micro-projects really helps a lot in this project, as through the class’ micro-project we are able to learn and pick up new pointers.

References:

25 Dark And Disturbing Original Versions Of Children’s Fairy Tales

Jiak Kan Tang by Liz Kow

The Futurist Cookbook: 11 Rules for a Perfect Meal and an Anti-Pasta Manifesto circa 1932

The Futurist Cookbook (1930) Tried to Turn Italian Cuisine into Modern Art

Research Critique 1

Research Critique 1

  • How is your crowd-sourced time-based artwork a departure from traditional art making by a single artist?

With the use of social media, Instagram, the artist will post instructions and polls of the game, asking the audience to vote, who can do better, through the polling systems. The audience have the freedom to vote between the two choices. (Fig 1.) And once they finished voting, they are able to see the result of the poll instantly. After the polling session ended, the artists will take a video of themselves competing the game against each other. This is to meet the expectation of the audience and the unknown result.

Hence this is different from traditional art making by a single artist because it enables the audience to have control of the outcome, by predicting who can do the games better.

Fig 1. From left to right: Instruction, Poll & Screenshot of the Video
  • How is this method of peer-to-peer social interaction as found in open-source practices a departure from traditional proprietary modes of artistic creation and production?

It allow audience to input their thoughts and opinion through the polling system in Instagram. And with the power of social media and connections, not only our circles of friends are able to vote and watch the videos, but other people from different types of background and culture are able to join in the fun and input their opinion.

Quoted from Jeran Fraser, What Happens When Crowdsourcing And Social Media Merge:

"From crowdsourcing their opinions on a potential product idea to building contests that invites users' thoughts, social media uses crowdsourcing as an invaluable tool more often than we realize."
  • How is your crowd-sourced time-based artwork similar or different from the examples show in our open-source artists discussion?

Artwork chosen: Craig D. Giffen, Human Clock (2001 – ongoing)

Similarities

  • Both works include the audience thoughts by inputting something. For Craig D. Giffen’s work, audience are able to submit images of the time and it will be shown in the website at that point of time. And for our micro project, audience are able to submit their thoughts and opinion through polling and instantly they can see the result.
  • Both works are close source works as only the person, team or organization are able to maintain, control and modify it at certain time. For example Craig D. Giffen’s work, he is able to modify the layout of his website. (Fig 2.) However we, as audience, can’t modify it and we can’t control the image according to the timing. As for our micro project, we as a group can control and modify the questions we set for polling.
Fig 2. Sreenshot Craig D. Giffen, Human Clock Website

Differences

  • Both works have different timeframe. For Craig D. Giffen’s work, he’s work is a continuous timeframe where audience can continuously submit images of the time. As for our micro project, our instruction, questions and videos has a limited timeframe. Each instruction, question, video can last up to 15 seconds as this is one of the default setting of Instagram.
Quoted from Marc Garrett, DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic Co-Creation as a Decentralized Method of Peer Empowerment in Today’s Multitude:  

"Even though the Web and DIWO possess different qualities they are both essentially, forms of networked commons. They both belong to the same digital complexity, each are open systems for human and technological engagement."

For our micro project, both the games and Instagram have different qualities, such as the games are played physically but the Instagram is through the web, and both of it needs a network in common. For the games, we need audience to input their thoughts by voting. Hence with the use of Instagram and the power of connections, we can easily get more people to join in and collate the votes instantly. In conclusion, social media uses crowdsourcing as a very useful tool to gain more people to participate in a common goal.

References: 

DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic Co-Creation as a Decentralized Method of Peer Empowerment in Today’s Multitude.

What Happens When Crowdsourcing and Social Media Merge

What is open source?