MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries:
An action research project:
How can discursive food design ignite cross-disciplinary creative collaborations by creating resonance from the common experience in the post-pandemic?
This action research study is about exploring the use of discursive edible design in connecting creative practitioners to audiences across a variety of disciplines in the context of the post-pandemic. In this context, individuals have been disconnected from each other physically and emotionally for a period and have been reconnecting after the COVID-19 isolation.
A research project by Cindy Ho Yee CHAN in 2021
Index:
0. Welcome!
Thank you for coming to this place where I update my journey of Deep Food.
This page also serves as a learning journal of my study at MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries at Saint Martins, UAL.
I will be writing on the latest update on Deep Food's intervention at the same time as taking the above course.
The site will be posted in chronicle order, as such the latest update at the bottom.
Thank you in advance for your reading.
Cheers,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
1. The Late Kick off
Dear Deep Food,
I mark this date as the beginning of the Deep Food project at my Master of Arts study, hoping that I was able to begin this any earlier.
As a beginning, I have the following ideas and plans that I am going to list as a brain dump:
1. I need to consolidate a project rationale along the line of the interventions Deep Food has taken and will continue to take.
2. As candid as I can be, the project is clearly about Depth (of information/ knowledge) and Food (and the edibles), as such, Deep Food, a topic that I have been exploring with my partner since 2018.
3. Some resources I already have on my hand:
-previous effort on the project
- a media interview response that I have written and captured Deep Food's Ideas.
- Deep Food's previous interventions (reviews and reflections needed)
-some stakeholders contact I have accumulated from Deep Food's previous work
-an invitation from a media platform to write blog posts on design
-some good comments from my mentors and tutors (consolidation and reflection needed)
-previous research work on the philosophers' buns projects (not launched yet)
The next steps:
0.Write and reflect on the context of my situation and project development
1. Draft the WWHWI (what why how what if ) today
2. Gather a reference bibliography
3. Stakeholder mapping and establishing contacts
4. Draft learning agreements
In best companion,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
2. The Prologue
Dear Deep Food,
I am writing to reflect on the context of my situation and project development.
Please find my previous presentation on the project - the change I want to see as above.
Context:
1. I have been working with the name of Deep Food since 2018, Deep Food has 12 projects launched so far.
2. All past and current projects Deep Food are either a collaboration or a commission, that is, Deep Food never has a self-initiated project.
3. I would like the MA AI project to be the first Deep Food self-initiative to deep dive into what means by Deep Food.
Comments from Unit 1 tutor George:
1. I need to identify the stakeholders of the project and listing out some possibility
2. Since the combination of depth and food is new and abstract, I need to give example to picture what means by Deep Food.
3. I need to identify any existing interventions that are in the same direction.
Reflection and the next move:
1. Steer the project away from news food to purely Deep Food
2. Compile a report on current "Deep Food" practice and list stakeholder
3. Define Deep Food more concisely.
Best,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
3. WHAT : Deep Food
Dear Deep Food,
I am writing to consolidate the "What" for Deep Food for the "What Why How What If" task.
Ever since humans began to eat and cook, food played an important role in human civilization. Food provides us with our necessary nutrition; we live on food; we hunt for food; we forage for food. It's not too exaggerated to say that food plays a role in our society and culture: food is around our religions, that food and eating are related to many of our rituals and beliefs; food is around our connectedness to nature: eating is literally how nature and our human body becomes one. Food is as political: that human civilizations proceed through food trading and the fight over resources. Food is around even in gender issues, which is to hunt? Who is to forage? This question was almost the first gender-related question answered by our ancestor, which is fundamentally a gender-related question displayed through food and eating.
In short, food is almost inevitable in every sector of human living and being, and it has been playing a crucial role. As much as we humans still enjoy and rely on food, we hope the importance of food will only be explored in wider breadth and depth.
Seeing food as a medium is nothing new: from the first standing man started to have food intake to the extreme delicacy in haute cuisine that displayed culture, taste and class. The question is: how can we consciously take food for thought as a medium: appreciating that food is such a special medium that should be able to go beyond itself as some mere nutritious substance? In Deep Food, we believe that the power of food as a medium can go beyond its taste, convenience, its origin and can be expanded consciously to the level of content and culture: that when we decide to eat, the question can go beyond: how fast is it? How tasty is it? How nutritious is it? How fair-traded is it? How authentic is it? We believe that it can be developed towards this question: How Deep is it? In terms of content and culture.
It could be best to illustrate that through an example of our project. Taking our project: Stone of Origin, as one example, it is a project that designed sandstone-sculpted tableware combined with dishes to create a set of fictional ancient creatures. The project aims to provoke its audience to perceive our everyday intake as food and an ancient creature that has taken millions of years to come to our table, as long as the atomic formation of stones. When our audience sees the food and tableware sculptures as creatures, they start imagining how these creatures have lived, how it would behave, how it evolves and how it is related to us and the world. Through that, we hope people would have a second thought about food origin, not only in the scope of food production or environmental point of views, but in terms of a more macroscopic view of the formation of any matter in our material world, and to appreciate and treasure food in this cosmic perspective. (image as above)
In short: Food is a common language. Food is in our everyday life. Food as a language can spread messages and ideas towards eating. Food, as our everyday life, penetrate messages into our daily practice of consumption and intake. A marriage of food and message creates value for the social, environmental and economic aspect. Deep Food would like to explore this marriage by developing our knowledge of food and design.
To put it simply, the definition of Deep Food can be concluded in the 6 x 6 model I created earlier for Deep Food's practice:
Deep Food is, therefore: Food that provides value on up to the above 6 aspects, through up to 6 layers of discursive means an edible experience.
Best,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
4. Why-Deep Food
Dear Deep Food,
I am writing to consolidate the "Why" for Deep Food for the "What Why How What If" task.
Please find images of previous Deep Food interventions as above.
Context:
1. I am a graduate of Bachelor of Product Design
2. I work with my partner Heinrik on Deep Food, who is also a product designer.
3. Heinrik and I are making a living from Deep Food.
Why Deep Food is important and meaningful to me:
Both our co-founders came from a background of design, in particular, product design, in which we have both worked for various brands in product and industrial design. With such a background we constantly apply our expertise in manipulating 3-dimensional medium into food. Both of us have an interest in expressing our ideas through discursive design, however, we found that there is little room to realize this passion given the high economic and environmental cost of developing industrial products. Meanwhile, Food is also in some sense a 3-dimensional medium, of course, on top of that it has one more dimension: taste, and comparatively the environmental cost of manipulating food as a medium is much lighter than that of mass-produced industrial design. As such, we experimented to apply our knowledge on product and 3-dimensional design into the field of food and edible experiences, and since then we have been fascinated by its possibility and versatility. As a tangible and edible medium, we have been finding food a very friendly medium in a sense that many people can easily find their association with food, as such through that we can communicate with them our messages through our designed edible experience.
Best,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
5. Deep Food?
Dear Deep Food and its fellow tutors,
I am writing to consolidate my research question for the "What Why How What If" task.
I have the following ideas to draft my research question:
1. How can we consolidate knowledge on using edible experience as a discursive medium for creating immersive information transfer via food and eating in a more systematic way?
2. How can we develop knowledge on deep food (the medium) for deep food (the experience) via deep food(the practice).
3. How can we communicate via eating experience for immersive information transfer and dialogue by experimental practice on food experience.
I would like to gather some comments and feedback here to further polish the question.
For fun, above are images of previous Deep Food concept ideas (not launched nor realised).
Best,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
13th May 2021
6. Deep Food's Readings
Dear Deep Food,
Happy Monday! I am gathering a bibliography for Deep Food's next intervention today.
I have the following articles, books on my reading list in different themes:
1. Ideas on food and eating:
Marinetti, F. T. (1989). The Futurist Cookbook.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2013). Eat Design.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2020). Food Design Small
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2009). Food Design XL.
2. On food design:
M. Guixe. (2015) Food Designing. Corraini Edizioni
Vogelzang, M. (2008). Eat Love. Bis Publishers. Amsterdam.
Zampollo, F. (2016). What is Food Design? The complete overview of all Food Design sub-disciplines and how they merge. Academia, https://www. academia. edu/30048438/What_is_Food_Design_The_complete_overview_of_all_Food_Design_sub-disciplines_and_how_they_merge.
Zampollo, F. (2015). Welcome to food design. International Journal of Food Design
Zampollo, F. (2013). Introducing Food Design. In: Cleeren, S. & Smith, A. (Eds.) Food Inspires Design. Oostkamp, Belgium: Stichting Kunstboek.
3. On Human-food-interaction:
Dolejšová, M. (2018). Edible speculations: Designing for human-food interaction (Doctoral dissertation, National University of Singapore (Singapore)).
Dolejšová, M. (2020). Edible speculations: designing everyday oracles for food futures. Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs.
4. On speculative and critical design, discourse and communications:
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.
Malpass, M. (2017). Critical design in context: History, theory, and practices. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ruiz, J. R. (2009). Sociological discourse analysis: Methods and logic. In Forum qualitative sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative social research (Vol. 10, No. 2).
Shannon, C. E. (2001). A mathematical theory of communication. ACM SIGMOBILE mobile computing and communications review, 5(1), 3-55.
Tharp, B. M., & Tharp, S. M. (2013). Discursive design basics: Mode and audience. Nordes, 1(5).
5. On food:
The School of Life. (2019). Thinking and Eating: Recipe to Nourish and Inspire. The School of Life.
S. Q. Wang (2014). Food Player. Page One Publishing
Above are images of previous Deep Food reference ideas by fellow food design pioneers.
Best,
Cindy
Cofounder at Deep Food
17th May 2021
7. the Quest
Dear Diana,
Nice to meet you! I am responding to your feedback on my project as below:
1. What is it that I am wanted to discover or change via doing this project:
I would like to explore how can we transform food and eating experience into a form of discursive design beyond the edibles for communication and discourse.
2. An example of an intervention that I found (as on the image above)
Conflict Kitchen: a restaurant that only serves the cuisine of countries in conflict with the United States. Conflict Kitchen was launched as a restaurant in Pittsburgh that galvanizes political awareness through food.
The Kitchen is an example of an intervention that promotes awareness and develops empathy for political conflicts between the U.S. and other countries through food experience.
Reference link: https://www.conflictkitchen.org/about/
3. The definition of Deep Food:
Deep Food refers to food experiences that provoke critical discussions and reflection in areas that are extensive to the actual food substance consumed, including but not limited to the socio-cultural-political context of the edible experience.
Next Step:
Upon my question defined, I am going to explore the following to define the question:
1. What are the boundaries and facets of food and edible experience
2. What does it mean by discursive design
3. What are communication and discourse referring to
I look forward to receiving your feedback on my response.
Best,
Cindy
Student, MAAI
Cofounder at Deep Food
17th May 2021
8. Defining the Question
Dear Deep Food,
Based on my question I drafted in my last post, I am trying to define the key terms on the questions to substantiate,
the question being:
"I would like to explore how can we transform food and eating experience into a form of discursive design beyond the edibles for communication and discourse. "
I am going to provide research evidence on the following:
1. What are the boundaries and facets of food and edible experience
2. What does it mean by discursive design
3. What are critical debate and cultural discourse referring to
1. The boundaries and facets of food and edible experience:
Zampollo (2013) categorized Food Design into sub-disciplines: Design with Food, Design for Food, Food Space Design or Interior Design for Food, FoodProduct Design, Design about Food, and finally, Eating Design. Other pioneers define food design as such, as quoted by Zampollo (2015):
Food Design is the design (Gestaltung) of edible objects, this includes all processesÐ from the cultivation/breeding to the preparation of food - and all decisions that are taken to determine food as an object; more precisely the design of taste, consistency, texture, surface, the sound of chewing, smell and all other object properties.
Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter- Studio Honey and Bunny
Authors of Food Design XL (2010) and Eat Design (2013)
Food design is the design of food, which is thought, perceived, contextualized, ritualized, implemented and consumed as an object.
Martí Guixé
Generalist Designer
Food Design is part of a larger discipline I call Eating Design. Food Design is the actual and literal design of food where food, as matter and thus material, is being designed. This could be to enhance the eating experience, but it could also be to communicate an ideology or to fight food waste. Food design is an important part of Eating Design. Eating Design is the practice of designers working on the subject of food. The outcome is not necessarily the material of food. It can also be a system or a service. Eating design covers a large field connected to science, psychology, nature, culture and society.
Marije Vogelzang - Studio Marije Vogelzang
Eating Designer and Author of Eat Love (2008)
Through that, it could be concluded that food and eating experience is playing a crucial role in the discipline of food design.
In the first academic journal of food design, a range of definitions on food and eating experience, as in food and eating design, are explored by fellow food design practitioners and theorist, which included the following:
the context of food: the social, historical, intellectual, and technological systems that shape the food
the visual, sensory aspect of food
ingredients
recipe
preparation
packaging
presentation
instructions for storage
instructions for serving
the environment in which food is consumed
the tools used to store, prepare, cook, eat, transport and cleaning up the food
the way to dispose of food waste
the services, systems, and networks around food
2. The Definitions of Discursive and Speculative Design
According to Tharp (2013), discursive design refers to the creation of utilitarian objects/services/interactions whose primary purpose is to communicate ideas—artefacts embedded with discourse. Whereas Speculative Design, according to Dunne (2013), is a practice of creating imaginative projections of alternate presents and possible futures using design representations and objects.
3. Communications and Discourse
"From a sociological standpoint, discourse is defined as any practice by which individuals imbue reality with meaning. When defined in these terms, discourse is found in a wide range of forms. Indeed, any social practice from a dance, ritual or a piece of music to a job contract, myth or culinary custom can be analyzed discursively." (Ruiz, 2009).
"The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theatre, the ballet, and in fact all human behaviour." (Weaver and Shannon, 1964).
Image courtesy Martí Guixé.
Best,
Cindy
Student, MAAI
Cofounder at Deep Food
17th May 2021
9. What Why How What if
Dear George,
Thank you for your feedback on my attempt on the WHAT and WHY and on defining the research question, I would like to response as follow :D
1. On the WHY:
I agree that my current answer on the WHY section is very much personal or from the angle of the creator behind Deep Food: not so much from the angle of the 'outside' world, I guess I will further elaborate on that however I am not sure how much I need to support on the external need by data, especially given the intervention is not there yet: I feel like it becoming a question similar to whether the egg or the chicken exist first (not sure if this metaphor applies in english :P) I guess its feasible within this timeframe to do some stakeholder mapping or even user/participants interview.
2. On the HOW:
I think I haven't touch on the HOW yet- personally I found it somewhat confusing because my new tutor is telling me not to think on the intervention (or the HOW, as far as I can understand from my communication with her) before I can clearly define my research question, and meanwhile I have got the below issues with my question:
3. On the Question:
"I would like to explore how can we transform food and eating experience into a form of discursive design beyond the edibles for communication and discourse."
4. On format of this site and dis-linkage with deep food past work:
Totally agree that the site now is not at its best - I guess I would prioritise with my research tasks over the optimisation of the site functionality.
I will be aware of the distancing of Deep Food's past work with the current effort
5. On what's next (comments most wanted here!)
I have these following ideas over what could happen next:
1. more literature: reading on the key concepts on my research question
2. probe the question by interviews: probing the research question to food design practitioners and general audience
3. probing projects: equivalent to early intervention I guess? - maybe I can do another brain-dump listing on that, i.e. answering the HOW
4. answer the WHAT IF , and compile it to become my WWHWI draft as well as my learning agreement
5. redesigning this blog site for better facilitation
I guess this is how I would prioritise these:
-Over this weekend I have this live show with Deep Food happening - so I might just grab the opportunity to ask some simple question on Deep Food research proposal.
-Listing out stakeholders (already been doing) and strategising my possible interaction with them
-I hope to have the draft WWHWI by this Sunday
Thank you for reading and have a great day :D
Looking forward to your reply!
Image above is Deep Food experimental dumplings project: much of a brain-dump on how dumplings can be varied in terms of their wrapping method!
Best,
Cindy
Student, MAAI
Cofounder at Deep Food
19th May 2021
10. Some key questions
11. Some reflections
Dear Deep Food,
I am thinking out loud on those question I urge myself to think through while I proceed with the methodology in Applied Imagination:
What is the best next action to create impact by Deep Food?
What is the best approach to realise Deep Food imagination?
What is the most important question for me to answer on my intervention at this moment?
What is the most urgent question that I have to find out for my action?
What is the most effective (urgent + important) question for Deep Food to ask/ seek answer on?
What is the essence of Applied Imagination and on what ground I am believing and adapting this methodology to Deep Food?
Why is Action Research an approach for Deep Food after all?
is this a question to ask or to test by action?!
What is the role and necessity of "problem" in action research?
Can action research be realised without a "problem"?
Cindy
19th May 2021
Dear Deep Food,
I am reflecting on you.
Are you better described as - as in, more genuinely, less pretentiously- food for thought or in my most candid way of word play: food for tao?
Would food for tao be demanding audience/user/stakeholder/participants too much effort on thinking that it does not worth?
If food for tao is for myself: what exactly is tao? as much as, after my ten years of study in design: what the ____ is design? (according to one, "Design is a _____ making a." )
What the hell is design after all? Does that matter at all?
And I guess, yes, design shapes culture. That is exactly why I found food design such an intriguing subject to play with.
I would like to, seriously, with as much rigour as within my ability, play with food for thought.
How should I reframe this in the ethos/pathos/logos of Applied Imagination?
I would like to explore how can we play with food for thought by food design practice for the advancement of culture?
Does that balance between being academic and being candid enough?
Is academic and being candid and friendly mutually exclusive?
I allow myself to wander in these wonder....whilst keeping these principles and values as a compass:
To be as civil and thoughtful as I can within human potential and limits.
Goodnight to you and to the world,
Cindy
19th May 2021
12. Snail chart
Dear Deep Food,
I created a snail chart for you as a reflection on my constructive process of applied imagination. The chart is as above.
I have a discussion with the class tutor Zuleika on the role of disruptive innovation/ process in the positive way of MAAI, I think I could be abstracting things too much here. My takeaway from the discussion is that regardless of being disruptive or not: like some times the creative process can be a mess and going into different direction, it is still part of a constructive process.
On a personal note I would love to have spent more time with you and my family if I am having this flexibility.
Good day,
Cindy
26th May 2021
13. Draft W-W-H-WI
Dear Deep Food,
I was having some adjustment on scale of the research question based on my tutor's, Diana, advice that the research question has to be clearer and more specific. I agree with her that question should be specific to the time scale and contextual relevance to a more specific scenario, as such I am making some advancement to narrow and scale down (in terms of time scale) the project so that some intervention can be tested within the duration of the course.
Above note is my thinking process during the discussion I had with Diana ( it was almost a debate- but fun and fruitful at the end).
the original version of the question:
how can we transform food and eating experience into a form of discursive design beyond the edibles for communication and discourse.
Comments were these academic terms are still unclear and people may misunderstand some terms. Also it is like a situation that is already happening for long: food being a communicative medium. And as such there was no explicit gap and need in this question. At the same time the stakeholder/ target audience/ the who, is not defined here at all.
My response was that food as a medium has yet to be explored in a designer-ly way, as such the current emergence of food designers community. However, I was agreeing that the goal of communication and the "who" is undefined in the research question.
Looking back to this discussion two days ago, at this moment of writing, I think by then I only have identified a theme and its related issue and potential of development, not formulating a clear research question yet.
As requested, in the tutorial I immediately started rephrasing the question as the below versions:
How can food and eating experience become extra-edible to act as a discursive communication tool? (given that the designerly way of curating food experience is yet to be fully explored)
How can human-food-interaction becomes a means of communication and discourse for multi-sensory experience/ narrative/ dialogue.
Tutor comment was that it was just manipulation of language but not pushing the question to be clearer any further.
Peer comments were that they were confused by the use of language, ( I guess especially with discourse- a word that comes from cultural studies)
I agree with both comment and at the same time feeling relieve that Diana was suggesting to stop playing with academic terms: this is such a relieve because I was worrying these terminology are all too stating the obvious in a pretentious and unnecessary way. I can finally reduce the use of jargon so that the communication can be clearer and easier to understand even for those not in an academic domain.
So that brings me to the realization that I need to time/contextually scale this research question in a more realistic way, that the original question was sounding like something I would need a decade just to be closer to the answer.
That leads me to asking myself a question: what is the most appropriate question to ask through and by food/eating now.
and therefore the next version of question:
How can audience reflect/internalize on tao (as the ultimate question) through a eating experience that review their collective pandemic experience?
The next step I thought of was to brainstorm the most appropriate audience in the question: practically it can be creatives/ creatives in UK/ creatives in Hong Kong/ food creative.
there is a number of reason why I think creative can be the most appropriate audience:
1. By job nature, creatives are a group of professionals who need and has the motivation to answer and respond to the current situation of the world, being political/ environmental/ medical/ social, because they are fundamentally change-makers and creators of the future.
2. A larger portion of creatives, compared to other career types, are self-employed or freelancers, which is likely to be affected by current situation more and being more fluctuate in terms of their life style and income. as such they are a group that needs to answer/ develop their own set of philosophy on uncontrollability and restraints arguably the most.
3. They are accessible for this project because Deep Food has long been engaging with a network of creatives. They are generally easier to embrace changes and new concepts. And they want to be empowered to make creation and changes too.
I then brainstormed the question further as
How can edible experience create reflection and exchange between independent creatives from different disciplines on the times.
My next question is that what is that specific "time" pf being that I want to highlight the most, as well as narrowing / defining better the group of creatives that I am observing.
Defining the times:
it could be
pandemic/
climate emergency/
energy crisis/
food crisis/
political conflict
there could be practical and fundamental advantage / disadvantage of choosing each options: I can map that out and compared over some criteria ( I need to figure out the appropriate criteria before I can carry out this analysis. Those criteria I can think of for now are:
1. How far is it beyond the predictable
2. How feasible is it in the time/geographical scale
3. How specifically it can hit to my research question
Defining the audience ( the reason of each proposal):
creatives ( as list above)
creative manager (because they are more empowered plus having identity as a creative
executives (they are the one with the mist power and wealth)
My action plan for the next step is as such:
0. draft with existing material the what why how what if
1. research question further development: listing more existing options on the "time" (the when) and the "audience" (the who)
2. develop a criteria of evaluation on these options
3. document early intervention and record feedback from interviews: early intervention being deep food latest food event engaging 80+ audience on an immersive edible theater, analyzing insights from feedback
4. research planning to further investigate on the specific "time" and "audience" group, that is, defining the boundary of the testing ground of the project.
This is so late in Hong Kong...zzz
Best,
Cindy
26th May 2021
14. Purpose chart
Dear Deep Food,
Before I am drafting my initial what why how what if, I would like you to be reminded of this purpose chart I did at a research lab workshop Adam hosted earlier last term, I found this reminder to be a useful one for this moment.
Best,
Cindy
26th May 2021
15. Draft WWHWI and
learning agreement
Dear Deep Food,
I am trying to peek into the submission of final deliverable of my Unit 1 : project 6 and learning agreement...deadline tomorrow!
What- Why- How- What if
What:
How can food experience guide creatives to be engaged with in-depth reflection on their creative responses towards the current partially uncontrollable context?
note:
1. Food experience refers to any experience involving edible elements literally (that the person does eat) or conceptually (that the person engage with food but without eating, e.g. reading a recipe).
2. Creatives refers to creative industry practitioner from a diversified discipline of practice.
3. In-depth reflection refers to reviewing to matters with a conceptual depth, e.g. worldview.
4. Creative responses refer to mindsets and actions .
5. Current uncontrollable context refers to for example the pandemic/ crisis in food or energy/ climate emergency/ nature itself.
Why: Food for thought:
Ever since humans began to eat and cook, food played an important role in human civilization. Food provides us with our necessary nutrition; we live on food; we hunt for food; we forage for food. It's not too exaggerated to say that food plays a role in our society and culture: food is around our religions, that food and eating are related to many of our rituals and beliefs; food is around our connectedness to nature: eating is literally how nature and our human body becomes one.
Food is almost inevitable in every sector of human living and being, and it has been playing a crucial role. As much as we humans still enjoy and rely on food, I hope the importance of food will only be explored in wider breadth and depth.
Seeing food as a medium is nothing new: from the first standing man started to have food intake to the extreme delicacy in haute cuisine that displayed culture, taste and class. The question is: how can we consciously take food for thought as a medium (theme underlying my research question): appreciating that food is such a special medium that should be able to go beyond itself as some mere nutritious substance? I would like to explore how the power of food as a medium can go beyond its taste, convenience, its origin and can be expanded consciously to the level of content and culture: that when we decide to eat, the question can go beyond: how fast is it? How tasty is it? How nutritious is it? How fair-traded is it? How authentic is it? I would like to develop knowledge on how to use design so that eaters can ask: How Deep is the food? In terms of content and culture, beyond all the earlier questions.
Why: Creatives :
1. By job nature, creatives are a group of professionals who need and has the motivation to answer and respond to the current situation of the world, being political/ environmental/ medical/ social, because they are fundamentally change-makers and creators of the future.
2. A larger portion of creatives, compared to other career types, are self-employed or freelancers, which is likely to be affected by current situation more and being more fluctuate in terms of their life style and income. as such they are a group that needs to answer/ develop their own set of philosophy on uncontrollability and restraints arguably the most.
3. They are accessible for this project because Deep Food has long been engaging with a network of creatives. They are generally easier to embrace changes and new concepts. This group of practitioners want to be empowered to make creation and changes too.
Why using "uncontrollable" as a keyword to describe the current:
Because people worry too much to things they cannot change (i.e. the uncontrollable) and has a "temptation of meaning", according to philosopher Salvoj Zizek (Taylor, 2008), towards things they cannot even give a reason/ understanding on the happening.
How:
the intervention would be taken place through the brand of Deep Food: a food design studio I started prior to the MAAI course. Deep Food is started since 2018 and it has always been exploring the experience of food as a medium of thought, it has more than 12 public project launched so far. I plan to engage in the process of applied imagination in the following phases:
1: Validation- Until July 1st of research question and Initial research: readings on curation/ food/ food as language/ communication and initiating experts connections
2. Ideation- June 4th: Brainstorming on options and possible execution format of interventions
3. Intervention 0, Until June 7th : the Thinkers' Edibles: Mock up - designing some make-believe to probe, including but not limited to a guideline of creating recipe (for intervention 1),communication of final format of journal. elaboration on the theme of the uncontrollable current.
4. Intervention 1, from 7th June until 1st July, with interim review on 14th June : the Thinkers' Recipe: an Open Call launching a blog on the project on media outlet of my personal connection, and engaging its existing pool of creative practitioner by inviting them to express their interest and submit "edible essays", that is, recipes.
5. Intervention 2 from 1st July to before 19th July: the Thinkers' Edible-summit gathering the recipe, refine and develop them into actual food products/dishes and curate a food teaser experience, inviting targeted creatives from a diversified creative background. Gather feedback and engage with community of practice of food design for further actions
6. Intervention 3 from 19th July to before 9th August : the Thinkers' Edible-journal, volume 0, number 1, 2021. Engaging with interested collaborators to organize and launch an "editorial" of curated meal/ food experience in full,launching " edible essays"collected in earlier phases.
7. Intervention 4 from 9th August onwards: the Thinkers' Edibles (entity naming to be discussed) Manifesto: Engaging a community of food design practitioner, hospitality industry practitioner and creatives of a diverse range of medium to collectively, and in a participatory manner, manifest via food experience on how it can aid creatives to reflect on the partial uncontrollable current and possible change through the controllable.
What if:
Upon successful launching of the series of events, meaning that this project engage its creative practitioner into some in-depth review and reflection on current status, It could be resulting the creative mass being more mindful of their response towards the current uncontrollable world and hopefully motivate them to address on the controllable part these creative can contribute themselves to, ranging from but not limited to actions facing the climate/ food/ energy/ social/ political crisis. Even if the event gather the least attention, knowledge on using food as a language communicating thought is explored and can be applied on further actions.
Bibliography:
1. Ideas on food and eating:
Marinetti, F. T. (1989). The Futurist Cookbook.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2013). Eat Design.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2020). Food Design Small
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2009). Food Design XL.
2. On food design:
M. Guixe. (2015) Food Designing. Corraini Edizioni
Vogelzang, M. (2008). Eat Love. Bis Publishers. Amsterdam.
Zampollo, F. (2016). What is Food Design? The complete overview of all Food Design sub-disciplines and how they merge. Academia, https://www. academia. edu/30048438/What_is_Food_Design_The_complete_overview_of_all_Food_Design_sub-disciplines_and_how_they_merge.
Zampollo, F. (2015). Welcome to food design. International Journal of Food Design
Zampollo, F. (2013). Introducing Food Design. In: Cleeren, S. & Smith, A. (Eds.) Food Inspires Design. Oostkamp, Belgium: Stichting Kunstboek.
3. On Human-food-interaction:
Dolejšová, M. (2018). Edible speculations: Designing for human-food interaction (Doctoral dissertation, National University of Singapore (Singapore)).
Dolejšová, M. (2020). Edible speculations: designing everyday oracles for food futures. Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs.
4. On speculative and critical design, discourse and communications:
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.
Malpass, M. (2017). Critical design in context: History, theory, and practices. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ruiz, J. R. (2009). Sociological discourse analysis: Methods and logic. In Forum qualitative sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative social research (Vol. 10, No. 2).
Shannon, C. E. (2001). A mathematical theory of communication. ACM SIGMOBILE mobile computing and communications review, 5(1), 3-55.
Tharp, B. M., & Tharp, S. M. (2013). Discursive design basics: Mode and audience. Nordes, 1(5).
5. On food:
The School of Life. (2019). Thinking and Eating: Recipe to Nourish and Inspire. The School of Life.
S. Q. Wang (2014). Food Player. Page One Publishing
6. On the uncontrollable current
Taylor A. (Director). (2008). Examined Life [Film; DVD release]
Human Library:
Martin and Sonja @ Honey and Bunny (pioneering food designer/ artist)
Marti Guixe (food design pioneer and multi-disciplinary designer)
Bompas and Parr (Food design UK pioneer)
Charles Micheal (Chef and activist )
Marjie Vogelzang (the mother of eating design)
Potentially some course staff from CSM Culture, Criticism and Curation subject
Draft Learning Agreement:
Overview
“During Unit I I plan to sense my intent of food design creation and sharpen my research question appropriate to time scale and context. My ultimate ambition is to become a pioneer in design and food/eating experience who uses her Asian roots to innovate and inspire. I am going to achieve this with contributing to Deep Food;I am expected to develop my practice on Deep Food: An investigation and a creative response on defining eating experience as a thought-provoking medium,implicitly inspired by the Asian culture
How I have achieved this learning
-
I tried for the first time in my project 1 to engage with public audience from around the globe on social media to feedback on an object I created for this project. To me this was an unpredicted experience for the insight I gained from these interaction that would help develop any project further from any expected results.
-
The amount of research I conducted on food for thought has been record-breaking for myself, I have never been devoting that much effort on reading literature on food design and communication theory. Alongside I am also using action research to gather feedback through intervention.
-
In project C my team and I did plenty of research analysis to prepare for our project deliverables. In project 6 I also tried to list out as much option as I can think of on intervention and possible stakeholder.
-
In project B, my team rolled out a fake campaign for itsu sushi brand with real edible product prototyped, ideas are being developed through experimentation on creating the edible objects.
-
In project 5 and 6 I develop my subject understanding on food design from existing text and projects.
-
/7 In project D speaker debate I facilitated a speaker presentation with drafted discussion questions. In all of my team project the team work has been effectively, I have tried to resolve conflict between teammates with aid of tutor.
My Tutorial Strategy:
My priorities during tutorials will be as follows…
-
To sharpen my action research
-
To reflect on my learning from the research
-
To transform learning into impact and evaluate the impact
My intention of Unit 2 and 3
These are some of the questions/problems/subjects that I care about, the things that make me feel excited or angry or disturbed or happy – or just curious…..
How can we:
-
define eating experience as a medium to spread messages and engage discussions through a creative experiment and intervention
-
explore creative methodology specific to the medium of eating
-
explore the application and value of Asian philosophy and culture in the emerging discipline of eating design
These are the capabilities which I already possess or would like to possess, which may be useful in addressing the subjects or questions above…
Prior experience of practicing food design.
A training in product and 3-dimensional design.
Skills in visual communication.
Best,
Cindy
26th May 2021
16. Action planning(log)
Food for Thought
The Thinkers' Edibles
Engaging creatives to reflect on their partial control on the current
Dear Deep Food,
Some action plan I am writing below to plan my logging and unit 1 submission:
Tasks I want to do- top for top priority:
1. Project 6 brief revisiting and renewing
2. Adding to WWHWI: Project bottom line, stretch goal (for What If) time scale (for How)
3. Learning Agreement- enriching detail: Unit 1 submission (fitting to word count)
4. Logging feedback from early intervention- food event Deep Food hosted in Hong Kong (need to request photo record)
5. Improving design of this log by adding more anchors and directory for navigation
6. Visual summary of project: WWHWI and other map diagrams
7. Logging feedback from expert interview with Martin @Honey and Bunny
8. Logging a recap on the process from start until now
9. Reflection on action research/ intervention/ process
10. Message to classmate Nicole who is doing an aligning project
11. Stakeholder mapping
12. "Food for thought" live dialogue/forum on social media to engage with stakeholders
13. External adviser request to food design pioneers and relevant experts:
potentially: Martin and Sonja @ Honey and Bunny (pioneering food designer/ artist)
Marti Guixe (food design pioneer and multi-disciplinary designer)
Bompas and Parr (Food design UK pioneer)
Charles Micheal (Chef and activist )
Marjie Vogelzang (the mother of eating design)
Course staff from CSM Culture, Criticism and Curation subject
Time frame:
27th May:
Bottom-line is task 1-3
Stretch goal is attempts on task 4-8
31st May:
Bottom line: full completion, task 4-8
Stretch goal: reading for initial content for task 9-11
1st June:
Bottom line: Task 9-13 full completion
Stretch goal: Intervention 0 action and evidence
3rd June:
Bottom line: Intervention 0 action, feedback and evidence documentation
Stretch goal: Unit 2 progress presentation- Intervention showcase advance action
7th June:
Bottom-line: completion, unit 2 progress presentation, more research subject reading
Stretch goal: reflective journal
8th June:
Bottom-line: preparation and action for 14th intervention showcase
Best,
Cindy
27th May 2021
17.Unit 1-WWHWI final
Dear Deep Food,
Please find my final what why how what if for Unit 1 as below!
Project 6 What- Why- How- What if: Cindy Chan Ho Yee 11339483
What: How can food experiences engage independent creatives with reflections on their responses towards current uncontrollable context? ¹
Why: Food is arguably the one medium that involves all senses of the human body. How can we consciously make food for thought? Being a food designer, I would like to explore how the power of food as a medium can go beyond its taste, convenience, its origin and can be expanded consciously to the level of content and culture. This research is targeted at independent creatives because by job nature, creatives are a group of professionals who need and have the motivation to answer and respond to the current situation because they are fundamentally change-makers. Meanwhile, being self-employed, they could be more vulnerable to the current situation. As such it is important for them to reflect on their views on the uncontrollable to shed light on what is controllable by them. This is also an accessible target group. The word "uncontrollable" is a keyword to describe the current because people worry too much about things they cannot change and have a "temptation of meaning", according to philosopher Salvoj Zizek (Taylor, 2008), towards things they cannot even give a reason or understanding on the happening.
How: the intervention would take place through the brand of Deep Food: started prior to the MAAI course in 2018 and it has been exploring the theme of food for thought since its establishment. The action plan is as follows:
-
Validation (13/5-1/7): sharpening the initial research question and doing Initial research: readings on curation/ food/ food as language/ communication and initiating expert connections.
-
Intervention 0 (27/5-7/6): the Thinkers' Edibles- Mock up: designing some make-believes to probe, including but not limited to an elaboration on the theme of the uncontrollable current; a guideline of creating recipe (for intervention 1); communication of the final format of the journal (for intervention 3).
-
Intervention 1 (7/6-1/7, interim review 14/6): the Thinkers' Recipe: an Open Call: launching a blog on the project on a media outlet of my personal connection, and engaging its existing pool of creative practitioner by inviting them to express their interest and submit "edible essays", that is, recipes.
-
Intervention 2 (1/7- 19/7): the Thinkers' Edible-summit: gathering the recipes from contributors, refining and developing them into actual food products or dishes to curate a food teaser experience, inviting targeted creatives from a diversified creative background. Gathering feedback and engaging with a community of practice of food design for further discussions and actions.
-
Intervention 3 (19/7-9/8): the Thinkers' Edible-journal, volume 1, number 1, 2021.: engaging with interested collaborators to organize and launch an "editorial" of meal/ food experience in full, launching "edible essays" collected in the earlier phases.
-
Intervention 4 (9/8 and onwards): the Thinkers' Edibles (naming to be discussed) Manifesto: Engaging a community of food designer, hospitality industry practitioner to collaborate with creatives of a diverse range of mediums, to collectively, and in a participatory manner, manifest via food experience on how creatives reflect on the partial uncontrollable current situation and spark ideas of possible changes through the controllables.
What if: Upon project mastery, this project engages its creative practitioner into in-depth review and reflection on their current status and context. It could result in the engaged creative community being more mindful of their responses towards the uncontrollable current and hopefully motivate them to address the controllable part these creatives can contribute themselves to, ranging from but not limited to positive actions facing the climate/ food/ energy/ social/ political crisis. If in case the event attracts the least attention, knowledge on using food as a language is explored and can be applied onto further actions, plus the project establishes my network as a food design practitioner.
-
Footnote:
-
Food experience refers to any experience involving edible elements “eaterally” (that the person does eat) or conceptually (that the person engages with food but without eating, e.g. reading a recipe). Independent creatives refer to self-employed or freelance creative industry practitioners from a diversified discipline of practice, using a variety of mediums, for example, text, images, audio, dance... Reflection refers to reviewing matters with a conceptual depth, e.g. a mindset, a worldview. Responses refer to mindsets and creative actions in response to the current situation external to the creative practitioner. Current uncontrollable context refers to, for example, the pandemic/ crisis in food or energy/ climate emergency/ nature itself.
Best,
Cindy
27th May 2021
18.Early intervention feedback
Dear Deep Food,
I am logging the feedback from the last public event by Deep Food, as a collection of feedback from early intervention on the subject of food design. The event happened on 22nd and 23 rd May in Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, under a public art project by Hong Kong government art museums ( Art Promotion Office) engaging a total of 86 public audiences in a performance with edible experience.
In this public happening, I curated an artwork featuring eight recipe design, each containing the unique history and story of the trees and heritage of the gardens. Each audience came to our site of happening where they interact with our actor and collect a box containing 4 desserts about old trees or heritage of the gardens.
I am typing the qualitative feedback from the audiences in bullet points or quotes:
1. unexpected tasting stimulate the audience to ask the reason and story behind the taste and engage them to learn and reflect.
For example: in the series, a wagashi (Japanese style dessert) is served, and the flavour is altered to have a subtly bitter flavour with Chinese herbal. A lot of audiences pay attention to the reason for this bitter flavour because it contrasts with their normal understanding.
2. the macro context affect the perception of the event
People are under common contexts such as covid or the political status of hong kong, as such these can be taken into consideration which creates a common and time-specific condition of perception to audiences.
3. The pace of the event affects how the audience engages with the food pieces
A number of participants comment that the pace of the happening is too fast and suggested that voice guidance can help them to consume and appreciate the edible pieces in a slower manner so that the story can be fully read by the audience.
Take away to inform the next intervention:
1. Make use of the unexpected, create linkage with the expected
2. Aware and put the macro context into use
3. Design the pace of the engagement
Best,
Cindy
31st May 2021
19. A Visual Mock Up
On Fermented Normal
Thinker's Edibles
Engaging creatives to reflect on their responses
towards the new normal through food
Hello Future!
Here and now, our normal becomes new!
The pandemic, the climate, the conflicts...
Watch the fermented normal:
uncontrollably by nature;
Catch the fermented normal:
controllably by culture(us).
Take it, cook it, and taste it!
How does this work?
By collecting responses from creatives on the new normal, this project is going to turn thoughts on the Fermented Normal into recipes and edible experiences for
sharing, exchange and discussion!
Open call Phase 1:
Making the
Thinkers' Recipe
Step 1:
Review your thoughts and reactions on
the new normal as a creative.
Step 2:
Submit your thoughts through this form.
Step 3:
Subscribe and get updates on an edible transformation of your submission
One step extra:
Express your interest to join the transformation!
Stay Tuned!
Catch the latest updates on this project on
https://www.deepfooddesign.com/learning-log
20. Tutorial 7th June
The Question(updated):
How can we foster independent creatives' collective interdisciplinary response to the uncontrollable context of Hong Kong through food dissemination?
Description:
Food dissemination refers to any experience involving sharing of edible elements “eaterally” (that the person does eat) or conceptually (that the person engages with food but without eating, e.g. reading a recipe).
Independent creatives refer to Hong Kong self-employed or freelance creative industry practitioners from a diversified discipline of practice, using a variety of mediums, for example, text, images, audio, dance...
Collective interdisciplinary responses refer to collective mindsets and creative actions across disciplines in response to the current situation external to the creative practitioner.
Uncontrollable context refers to, for example, the pandemic/ crisis in food or energy/ climate emergency/ nature itself in Hong Kong local context.
The problem:
why do we need to foster collective interdisciplinary response to post-pandemic?
Cross-disciplinary collaboration as a needed action to response post-pandemic.
Not only one discipline can answer the situation, therefore need collaboration.
the connected everything- always exist- however professionalism cause disconnectedness
cross-dis collaboration and communication is needed as post-pandemic response are inter-disciplinary solution
social media -being major communication and interaction
Social media can't address the real connection of people for change.
Algorithm disconnect people and pull alike people together to form echo chamber
How we connect people with basic medium- food and eating
Food at a different level as an alternative socialising method to connect people,
food's role as the basic social medium- shape culture of discussion- the mode still being relevant and where can it go beyond
Difference with traditional eating practice e.g. hotpot: didn't serve people for change/action and communication and collaboration only gather people
This research is targeted at independent creatives because by job nature, creatives are a group of professionals who need and have the motivation to answer and respond to the current situation because they are fundamentally change-makers. Meanwhile, being self-employed, they could be more vulnerable to the current situation. As such it is important for them to come together to review the uncontrollable to shed light on what is controllable by them. This is also an accessible target group.
The word "uncontrollable" is a keyword to describe the current because people worry too much about things they cannot change and have a "temptation of meaning", according to philosopher Salvoj Zizek (Taylor, 2008), towards things they cannot even give a reason or understanding on the happening.
Research:
1. Post-pandemic collaboration:
How the situation need people sit together and look at the issue critically and across disciplines
2. social media:
Internet digital socialising pattern and information reception pattern that create echo chamber of people and information
3. social pattern related to food: food format - factors of social pattern in food
e.g. social class/ political views (pro/anti- establishment)
4. what has been done?
Intervention plan:
1. reflect on the intervention- visual mock up
2. make a food format to serve the above
14th June 2021
21. Intervention feedback and reflection
Dear Deep Food,
I have launched the early intervention as planned by making a visual mock up on https://www.deepfooddesign.com/thethinkersedibles for the "call for recipe" and I have received some response by sharing the link.
Jump to:
Form Responses:
Q1: How to you feel about the new normal as a creative?
Anxious
Anxious, Excited
Excited
Worried
Anxious
Depress, Anxious, Worried
Joyful, Anxious, Excited
Joyful
Joyful, Excited, Tech vs human
Q2: What is new in the normal to you?
- Being indoors more than before and seeing loved ones less frequently.
-A new awareness of the fragility of our systems and our interconnected nature of our lives. An awareness that it can all be brought to a sudden stop, and an awareness of how much we depend on human connection for our wellbeing.
-Living with social distancing and people are far more thoughful about germs and viruses
-The fact that COVID impacts all of my decisions
-Knowing people without recognizing their face, fresh air
-suppression, surveillance, being silenced, isolation, individuation
-stay alone with computer
-The new normal is an opportunity to try out new ways of living, connecting, cooking, learning, etc It’s a challenging experience!
-Online communication
Q3:
What are your issues or concern during the time of the new normal?
So much time away from people and having to put so much thought into just going outside. How many people will I be around? Could they have COVID? Did I bring my mask? Do I need a reservation everywhere I go?
Wether the entertainment industry that I work in will ever recover.
Anxiety of going back into the society
Living with less freedom
People distance, plan changes
It's too late for humanity. We're losing what it means to be human: empathy, kindness, camaraderie. And we'll probably go extinct because the new normal still doesn't embrace the urgency of the crisis we all face. (Actually, there's around 6: climate change, oceans dying, antibiotics failing, soil nutrients depleted, lack of drinking water, and world war 3.... yay!)
human connection
Lack of opportunities to interact with people and find a proper job within the creative industries
No presonal interaction
Q4:
What is your take on the new normal as a creative?
Adapt! It's a bit hard but doable, but give yourself time to destress and I also tell myself that sometimes just doing nothing for a day (or two) is okay even if it doesn't feel okay.
It’s exciting because we are more aware of how much we need creativity in an emergency, how it nurtures us and feeds our souls. But I’m also nervous, because everything has moved online, will we still be able to come together and connect in person? Will people have confidence or are they too worried about catching covid?
Its a new place, means new experience and habits
It makes consider paths that I wouldn’t have considered in the path
Reevaluate human relationship
While we can subvert a littler here or there, the main problem is that the new normal is considered sane. The old normal wasn't even sane. Just because we have advanced economies and technology, people assume we are eminently sane. In fact, we are immersed in insanity, leaving insanity as the only rational adjustment in this insane world.
how to stay peaceful inner self
As a graphic designer I am trained to have a creative mindset and positive approach to solve problems, I have found that my creative background and positive attitude towards the unknown helped me to overcome difficulties while in lockdown.
UX design , vitrual world seems safer
Q5:
How does the new normal "taste" and why?
Bland, no flavour, maybe like a piece of bread with nothing on it.
That’s difficult! I don’t know...perhaps it’s texture is delicate, because it’s been shown that our society can be brought to a sudden stop. The flavour is perhaps subtle and strange as this has been something we’ve all had to get used to, but there are maybe sudden strong tastes of citrus or sweetness as we’ve been happily surprised by how much we need each other, neighbours have come together to support each other etc so the taste is overall pleasant.
It taste… quite bland still. Cause we are still trying to figure out the flavours.
Like lemon because it can be bitter but refreshing
Humid and smellness, because I am mostly wearing my mask.
It has taste? Neitszche: "The wasteland grows: woe to him who hides wastelands within!" And woe to me who now finds life tasteless, empty and barren. The new normal is either tasteless and bland; all the better to hide the poison within. Or it's a saccharine distraction, an opiate for the masses, just as Mary Poppins sang "A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down!" Why hasn't anyone invented soylent or soma yet??
sorrowful but reaching sweetness
Hmm maybe like freshly baked bread?
tasteless - every new experience is a new taste
Q6-9: are personal data and contact details
Other feedback:
1. Website looks nice and interesting:
2. They are confused by the topic
3. They are not sure what will happen next
4. The visual style is different from previous Deep Food
Reflection:
1. The use of word "fermented" could lead to confusion , although it was meant to be a "food" word for the new normal.
2. It is very hard to engage creatives to think about recipe without giving them a format and a platform of sharing.
3. May need a rethink on the level of participation involved by other creatives in my project.
4. The form is very qualitative and require user to answer long open-end question, it could be a reason for the limited number of responses.
What's next:
The Thinkers' Table -beta
What:
The Thinkers' Table is a Dialogic experience featuring response of the pandemic transformed into food experience.
Why:
it is an experiment testing how food dissemination can act as a dialogue catalyse to engage and facilitate thoughtful discussion.
How:
Hosting a table with menu shaped by prior questionnaire as the beginning of the dialogue experience
testing the format of food for thought
When:
Submission of one pager to apply the venue
Creating a questionnaire to inform the recipe
Who:
D. H. Chen Scholars, a network of awardees of a full bachelor scholarship
Independent creatives from public
Where:
The D. H. Chen foundation office communal space
To-do:
1. Testing questionnaire and pre-event interaction for The Thinkers' Table -beta( until 8h June)
2. Testing recipe transformation of questionnaire answer (9th June to 11th June)
3. Launching intervention The Thinkers' Table -beta for pilot audience (13th June)
4. Logging, reflection and presentation to move on to recipe open call for The Thinkers Edibles (14th June)
5. the rest of the timeline on WWHWI
Best,
14th June 2021
22. Refining the What Why How
What: The question
How can discursive food design foster connections across creative disciplines in post-pandemic recovery?
Description of the question
How can
1. discursive food design foster
2. connections across creative disciplines in 3. post-pandemic recovery?
-
According to Tharp (2013), discursive design refers to the creation of utilitarian objects/services/interactions whose primary purpose is to communicate ideas—artefacts embedded with discourse.
Food design is the design of food, which is thought, perceived, contextualized, ritualized, implemented and consumed as an object. “The short history of food design begins when this type of action (manipulation of food elements)becomes self-reflective and is consciously integrated into the tradition of design.” Martí Guixé (2015)
-
Interdisciplinary communication, discussion and networking that contribute to understanding and inspiration collaboration between creatives
-
Transition of returning to public, social experiences after lockdown and other experience in the pandemic
M. Guixe. (2015) Food Designing. Corraini Edizioni
Tharp, B. M., & Tharp, S. M. (2013). Discursive design basics: Mode and audience. Nordes, 1(5).
Why:
1. Personal reason:
-
- To fulfil an Interest on discursive design that involves multiple senses
-
- To sustain creative output as a cofounder of Deep Food
-
- To contribute as a creative practitioner
2. Professional reason:
-
- To establish food design in an asian perspective/ value
-
- To build knowledge on discursive food design
-
- Food design has almost no role in the food industry and consumption system yet
3. Gap:
-
- Physical disconnection: The Pandemic result in city lockdown and physical isolation of individuals, thus reconnection to social experience becomes a common desire
-
- Information disconnection: Algorithm in social media disconnect people by polarising people to form echo chamber
-
- Professional disconnection: disciplines are disconnected due to professionalism of industry
-
- Interdisciplinarity is essential to creativity which is required to reshape the society after pandemic
How: The Round Table
About: A comparative test on facilitating a thematic discussion with dining scenario in food design method and in conventional culinary method
Objective: to test how food design can engage creatives across disciplines to discuss the theme of post pandemic recovery more than conventional dining experience
Method: present the same content for discussion in dining experience for a group of creatives by word in print and to another group of creatives by incorporating the content into sensory experience of dining
Result analysis: Observation and transcript of their discussion, reflective questionnaire after experience
Summer Plan (8 weeks starting now until 9th August)
-
Conduct secondary research on interdisciplinarity and food design (until 21 June-week 1)
-
Project visual identity and presentation design (28 June week 2)
-
Look for venue and human resource for delivery of test (12 July week 3-4)
-
Call for public participants (19 July,week 4-5 )
-
Food design development for the Round Table ( 2 August, week 6-7)
-
Execution of dining experience ( 9 August, week 8)
-
Analysis of result (9 August, week 8)
21 June 2021
23. Summary: Ideation for intervention
This week I have given a presentation of my idea for intervention
Recap: The question
How can discursive food design foster connections across creative
disciplines in post-pandemic recovery?
Description: the aim of the study is to explore how can designed edible experience that deliver message can act as a means to build interpersonal connection and understanding between independent creatives of different disciplines, for example creatives that work with different mediums, in the time of the pandemic that disconnects people physically and emotionally.
An intervention - unfortune cookie
The fortune cookie embed message of luck in cookie, whereas the unfortune cookie connect people who shared the same unfortunate situation of Covid.
Each package of cookies contain a number of variations that each represent the response from one independent creative.
By sharing the cookies to other creatives individuals, views and emotions towards the post pandemic are distributed and thus making connections.
The backbone of the intervention
This intervention is created based on a study of psychology by Aron A. (2013) has tested the creation of connection by giving 36 questions to pairs of individuals and the study has proven that understanding and sharing of the same experience would build connection between individuals who are stranger to each other.
“The self-expansion model suggests there should be particularly strong benefits from participating together in activities that are experienced as self-expanding by virtue of being novel and challenging (and that there may be little or no benefit to the relationship from shared activities that are neither self-expanding nor gen- erate the feelings of excitement associated with rapid self-expansion).”
Aron, A., Lewandowski, G. W., Jr., Mashek, D., & Aron, E. N. (2013). The self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships. In J. A. Simpson & L. Campbell (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of close relationships (pp. 90–115). Oxford University Press.
How:
By collecting responses of creatives on their reflection on the unfortunate pandemic and turn the feedback into the format of cookies, the study use discursive food design as a platform of exchange and connection across creative disciplines.
The intervention connect creativea by highlighting mutual experience of the challenging pandemic and the challenge being a creative individual in this difficult time.
Action plan and time frame
Round one: Engaging with 3 creatives ( two hour interview with 3 creatives- done) and 10 audience ( receiver of the cookie set)
Design phase: now until 7th July
Production phase: 8- 12th July
Distribution and review: 12-18th July
Round two: review on the first round and modifying the interview method and number of audience - End of July
Round three: engaging food manufactures and mass produce the cookie set for the final group of audience. - end of August
28th June
24. Interview invitations: Unfortune cookies
This week I have been interviewing several friends for the trial pieces and sending out around 20 invitations to creatives practitioners out of my network. And I received a number of positive replies. I also asked a journalist to refine my interview questions and give me tips on conducting better interviews with more open-ended questions and free flow conversations. I have also written an intro of the project so that I can explain to my interviewees when I send invitations to them:
Deep Food presents
“News Food”
Vol 1:
Unfortune Cookies
Fortune cookies for spreading fortune;
Unfortune cookie for the connection in the unfortunate pandemic
Deep Food designs cookies that each represents one creative individual in the now
One cookie connects to one creative mind
Shall we see how many connections can a pandemic lead to?
What’s News Food?
A series of curated food experiences to transform real-life news and stories to mass distributed edible pieces
What’s next?
Deep Food invites creatives of all kinds to our interview on your thoughts and actions towards the current pandemic. Based on these interviews, views will be transformed into cookies and published via sets of unfortune cookies. Interested parties can pm for a set of three example pieces.
5th July 2021
25. Unfortune Cookies: first trial recipes
This week I have been creating trial pieces from my mock interviews with creative practitioners whom I have already known. Each interview lasts around 45 minutes.
The first interview was a group one which I found difficult to handle and to make sure every interviewer has given enough information for me to proceed to the design phase. As such in the second interview, I organized individual interviews with some open-ended questions, the result gives much more information compared to the first one.
The three trial pieces are on the image above, from left to right they represent:
1. Designer Joseph Wan:
An industrial designer who is interested in generative design and has a stone-craft brand, Joseph designed multiple small aids in the pandemic such as a facemask add-on for more comfortable wearing.
I designed a cookie that resembles stones by using black sesame and poppy seeds. Using seeds to create flavour represents his idea of accumulating impact from small interventions during the pandemic.
2. Designer Wendy Law
A product designer who choose to have a new full-time job during the pandemic and still rent her studio for other projects for her own brand, Wendy followed a conventional path for product designer entering a large corporate in Hong Kong and wait for other opportunities at the same time.
I designed a cookie that has a chewy mochi filling in cookies that has a rigid pattern to represent her inner aspiration of designing freely and her struggle in following a conventional path.
3. Designer Francis Fung
A fresh graduate from Product Design bachelor degree who completed a final project producing a template for building stove in the wild for connecting communities.
I designed a cookie that resembles a stove with colourful sugar sprinkles inside, which tries to encapsulate her idea of being mentally less serious but still being active about heavy issues Hong Kong is facing.
12 July 2021
26. News Food at PolyU
This week I have received an invitation from my former university: PolyU School of Design to provide a series of tea gatherings for the school industry partners, I decided to ride on this opportunity to make the tea gathering part of my intervention, since the audience and project fit well into my current news food projects.
the proposal is as below:
News Food:
A series of curated food experiences to transform real-life news and stories into edible pieces. The first volume of News Food is featuring 10 Hong Kong creatives, turning their voices into packages of cookies, it is planning to be launched this summer 2021. News Food is the master study thesis project for Deep Food’s Cofounder Cindy Chan at Saint Martins, aiming at exploring how can edible experiences that deliver messages act as a means to connect creatives across disciplines.
News Food x SD Annual Show
Deep Food is presenting an SD version of this project as a starter experience for the annual show - featuring a series of snacks each inspired by one graduate project at the annual show. A selection of up to 12 projects, edited in several themes, would be presented as “edible newspapers” at the starter experience, which at the same time serves as a teaser for the annual show guided tour. The experience is aimed at giving edible transformation of student projects to impress the participants and generate interest towards student projects.
News Food Mini-drama setting
To make the experience more immersive, Deep Food proposes to engage several student helpers to act as “newspaper carriers” at the starter experience. Each of them would deliver a newspaper of a different theme and would be walking around the venue to introduce the edible news to participants. It is suggested that this starter experience would take 45 minutes for delivery of around 9 finger food pieces for each audience.
Practical requirements:
The delivery of the project would require the cost of the licensed food manufacturer, packaging printing and arrangements of 3-4 student helpers as actors at each session. The design and production would take at least until July 23th for the event to take place starting 28th July. The project has an estimated budget of 45k hkd covering design, production and logistic cost for an audience size up to 150.
About Deep Food: www.deepfooddesign.com
19 July 2021
27. Unfortune cookies designs
This week I have been creating design of the unfortunate cookies based on interviews I had with 10 creatives in a variety of disciplines, including illustrations, Fine Arts, Product Design, Architectural design and fashion design. Each design record the feature of each creatives and the flavour record their emotions in the pandemic, whether being numb, positive or being experimental and adventurous. I also created another package design for the cookies and launched the promotion of the outcome - as part of the intervention on social media
On top of the 10 unfortunate cookies for 10 creatives, I designed 12 cookies for the PolyU project under the same topic.
I started to engage with licensed kitchen to execute the cookies, and consult them for practical advice, I also tested with the printing of the packaging.
Looking back on the effort taking this month, I think I have progressed on a strong foundation of research on my projects, spending enough time to review the literature on the topic of food design before I started to create the intervention. I think the reviews let me grasp a better understanding on the bigger picture of food design being a rather undeveloped discipline of design. I think the idea of intervention has been jumping back and forth during the process although I find out this could be part of a natural process of creating an intervention.
25 July 2021
28. Discussions for July tutorial
Feedback from the first round of intervention:
I brought the trial set of cookies to the creative practitioners whom I interviewed and asked for their feedback:
The feedback from my first batch of audiences are very positive, they have given strong interest in the unfortunate cookie and they have expressed that they feel community connections for creatives in the pandemic is very much needed and they look forward to how the cookies can spread a word and connect them to other creative practitioners.
To be discussed in the July tutorial:
How should I evaluate the second and third rounds of intervention?
How should I gather data that reveal the impact of my intervention?
next action:
designing the launch of the cookies product- first time reaching out to public audience
decide how to gather feedback to measure the impact of the next intervention
schedule ahead:
Launching of the cookies at the PolyU ( starting 9th August to 14 September)
Launching of the unfortune cookies for 10 creatives ( production delivered on 18 August)
26th July 2021
29. 26 July tutorial presentation summary
Critical Feedback:
Positive- mainly from creatives and cilents:
- "community connection is much needed in the post-pandemic, and the cookies can be one of the opportunities to link creatives"
-" the packaging is appealing"
-"The cookies has very unique design and would catch attention"
-"the cokkies design looks nice!"
_ "this could be considered as an expandible and scalable model of retail products or events service. "
Negative- some from creatives, some from kitchen:
-" the cookie trial doesn't look appealing"
- " the cookies designs are hard to execute"
Self-reflection:
Positive:
- I think there is a strong foundation of research to back up the intervention since I have done a substantious amount of secondary research reading
- I am pleased with the amount of effort I put into designing the cookies and polishing the intervention
negative:
- I could have better record the learnings from each reading
-I could have followed the format of presentation better
Research
Primary:
-Interviewing 1-1 with 10+ creative practitioners, each for more than 45 minutues, some including studio visits.
-material (cookie) research
Secondary:
-Books review - image as above
-Academic articles on building inter-personal connection, food design and communication
Intervention
-A trial set of cookies was given to 10 creative practitioners and two licensed kitchens for commentary
-Signed contract with PolyU that purchased the outcome of this project for 150 industry partners as audience and funded the making of 12 types of cookies.
-designed 22 types of cookies, 10 for the interviewed creative practitioners and 12 for design graduates for the PolyU project
-Designing packaging and launch event of product
Schedule:
Launching of the cookies at the PolyU ( starting 9th August to 14 September)
Launching of the unfortune cookies for 10 creatives ( production delivered on 18 August)
26 July 2021
30. Preparing Second Intervention at PolyU-1
Work completed this week:
This week I have been preparing for the News Food experience at PolyU, I have been editing the newspaper which contains the cookie at the event, as well as information about the design graduates projects and information about the cookie related to the projects. I have been clustering information onto the newspaper and editing the design of the layout so that it looks more like a newspaper.
I have also sourced costumes for the "paperboys" who distribute the newspaper with cookies at the event.
Meanwhile, I also have two tastings with the licensed kitchen which bakes the cookies for the event to make sure the taste and look are fulfilling the design requirement.
2nd August 2021
31. Preparing Second Intervention at PolyU -2
Work completed this week:
To facilitate the event so that the audience get know the design graduates and their projects through discursive food design- at this time being cookies, I have written a script for a mini-drama of the paperboys, in which the actors act as paperboys distributing and introducing the newspaper.
the script is as below:
Good afternoon guests, Thank you for coming to the gathering today. I am Ben, your narrator for today. Today we will be serving a project by Deep Food, a designer duo that use edibles to deliver messages. Let me welcome you to this experience created by the team, called News Food. What if food can deliver the news? What if the news this time is reporting the graduate projects from the School of Design?. Let us welcome our papergirls who are going to introduce to us the news today!
Papergirl 1
Breaking news! Breaking news! madam and sir, I have got this very important newspaper for you today- This paper from news food, is telling us to Mind The Future, you know how dangerous our tomorrow can be?
papergirl 1:
I would say the future envisioned by design students got to have some attention! How would you imagine the internet of things becomes the internet of eyes: watching over your everyday? How would you prepare for the future media where the truth needs to be strived not to be spoon-fed?...
Paper girls 2:
Your fiction is going endless! Listen to me, why don’t we face the current problem more positively? My paper is reporting solutions from colour therapy for better quarantine experience, to space hacking of the lift to re-connect people in covid.
Papergirl 1:
Ok, ok, it doesn’t matter how much we describe- the choice is up to you all, please choose one of the news we are delivering and remember we have limited copies for each!
Narrator:
Thank you newsgirls, to mind the future or to cope with the present- we are going around the table to let you choose. In news food, the news is also edible, please enjoy the treats as you read through our paper!
Narrator distributing the paper, serving from the bags of papergirls
When all papers in this act are served:
Papergirl 1:
As all of you have made your choice- thank you for choosing my paper: Mind the future, we are featuring The orb of health, an interior and environmental design project that use spatial language to interpret a science fiction where humans are deindividualized while being mass-produced like objects.
Papergirl 2:
Coping with covid is featuring iso-oasis- an integrated design project that uses colour therapy as a common language connecting solutions of various design disciplines, the project uses colour as abstracted nature to provide therapeutic experiences in quarantine.
Papergirl 1:
Another project featured is a product design project: unobjects, that use a series of home products to remind us of how cloud-connected objects could be invading our privacy.
Papergirl 2:
While project Wecore is a space hacking project by social design student that use minimal change to hack the lift as a space that connects student at different floors in the school and a platform to promote various social activities.
Papergirl 1:
Last but not least the news is also covering a communication design project: the truth needs to be, a visual campaign to guard the media truth in contemporary society. Please have a taste of the future.
Papergirl 2:
As well as Coddy, a project that uses gestures of turning a physical device to help people distinguish between their working mode and break mode, solving problems they found about working from home. Hope you would find these solutions smart and helpful!
(meanwhile of the paper girls are introducing the paper- the narrator serve the add-on part for coddy cookie)
Narrator:
Thank you for enjoying the news food, the news girls are presenting another paper after our dean’s presentation, I will pass the stage to our dean now.
Dean’s talk
Round two
Narrator:
Thank you for listening to the dean’s presentation and thank you Dean for the inspiring talk! I know that our newsgirls have prepared for us some light-hearted news as the second part of our news food experience.
Papergirl 1:
Yes, you are right, for instance, the news I have here is about the forms of mountains, featuring fresh perspectives of design students’ imaginations around mountains. It’s featuring three projects and linking each of them up with the mountain as a common theme. I am sure you would be delighted to read this piece of news.
Papergirl 2:
Mountains and nature can be pleasant, but what about getting inspired by the wild imaginations featured by the paper I have. The headline for me is Objects Reimagined, it is featuring how design students are pushing the boundaries of everyday objects, I found these projects very intriguing!
Narrator: Thank you again for introducing, let us come over to each of you to deliver one of the papers from newsgirls and enjoy the rest of the afternoon treats.
Narrator distributing the paper, serving from the bags of papergirls
When all papers in this act are served:
Papergirl 1:
How many forms can a mountain take? This news featured project tape 001, a digital media project delivering a short film that uses the mountain as one of the main scenes, where the characters collected different audio onsite and were astonished by nature. This film emphasizes the audio-visual elements in a storytelling experience.
Papergirl 2:
If you got the news headlined Objects reimagined, you will be amazed by how creative the reported designs are: For example, A concrete companion, an advertising design project that infused emotional stories to the seemingly cold concrete objects.
Papergirl 1:
Another featured project is by an advertising design student, recall your One day, an advertising campaign that promotes a perfume brand called One day, and linkage scents to memories of individuals.
Papergirl 2:
What’s more, it also featured the objects of abnormality- a communication design project that transform objects that represent the present into pinhole cameras and see the current world through the lens of objects.
Papergirl 1:
While project: reimagine the forgotten dynasty is an interior and environmental design project that transforms 2d Chinese landscape painting to 3-dimensional spatial design.
Papergirl 2:
At last, there is Gratitude 2021, a product design project that introduces lighting design that is ephemeral while delivering a message about the gratifying experience of appreciating whatever it comes.
(meanwhile of the paper girls are introducing the paper- the narrator serve cookie foam for the cookie for project Gratitude 2021)
As guests finish all the edibles
Narrator: How do you find the news food? I hope you have enjoyed our experience. Thank you, Kary and Janice, for being our newsgirls for today, as our experience comes to an end, I hope you all have a nice evening, we are looking forward to seeing you again at the next edible experience by Deep Food.
9th August 2021
32. Second Intervention launch and feedback
This week I have launched my second intervention: News Food event at PolyU, this is a project commissioned by PolyU but at the same time fitting to my project brief of connecting creatives in post-pandemic recovery using discursive food design.
The project introduction is as such:
News Food
Transforming stories to edibles
News Food refers to series of curated food experiences to transform real-life news and stories into edible pieces. The School of Design version of this project features a series of snacks each inspired by one graduate project at the annual show. A selection of 12 projects, edited in several themes, was presented as “edible newspapers” at the starter experience for the School of Design show 2021 guided tour. The experience is aimed at giving edible transformation of student projects to impress the participants and generate interest towards student projects. To make the experience more immersive, Deep Food engaged several student helpers to act as “paper girls” at the starter experience to deliver newspapers to the audience.
The event has engaged more than 40 people in the creative industry, who were introduced to student graduates and their projects by cookies that are related to their creative work, the immersive experience connect creatives by using discursive food design and multi-sensory experience.
16th August
33. Third intervention: the unfortune cookies for creatives in the pandemic
Work completed this week:
This week I went back to the preparation of my third intervention, the unfortune cookie, being another volume of New Food. I completed editing the cookie's information, alongside an introduction of the creatives whom I interviewed, onto the packaging of the cookie which is also like a booklet, containing all the information about the project.
I have passed the cookies to the creatives whom I interviewed and asked for their feedback, meanwhile I am also drafting a feedback form for them to fill in.
23rd August 2021
34. Summary for August tutorial
1. the current question:
How can discursive food design foster connections across creative
disciplines in post-pandemic recovery?
Description: the aim of the study is to explore how an edible experience that delivers messages can act as a means to build interpersonal connection and understanding between independent creatives of different disciplines, for example, creatives that work with different mediums, in the time of the pandemic that disconnects people physically and emotionally.
2. the most significant developments - with a clear explanation of how these developments came about.
Launching of three interventions with early mock up, each requires design and distribution of edibles containing information of creatives- work and situation in the post-pandemic, as such highlight the mutual experience of the creatives and bring connection across disciplines.
- Early intervention: Mock up: includes a visual mock-up of the identity design and communication to stakeholders of this project, alongside a survey that gives early data for the project to begin
-The first intervention involves bringing the trial version of unfortune cookie, as the first volume of news food to 10 creative practitioners from different creative disciplines.
-The second intervention involves designing another set of edibles, the second volume of news food, which is also involving cookies, to connect the practitioner from the creative industry (around 40 so far with more in the future) to design student graduates from PolyU School of Design.
-The third intervention (on-going) involves designing, producing and distributing the final set of unfortune cookies to 50 audiences who have the interest to connect with the featured creatives.
3. An example of feedback, relative to testing your intervention
I have asked the creative practitioners whom I interviewed to give feedback on the cookies, some of them raised practical issues to facilitate better reading and eating experience such as better binding of the newspaper print, some are curious about the choice of cookies as the final food format.
In general, they have the interest to know and connect with other creative practitioners who were featured on the news and agree that the cookie format, as an edible experience is a more engaging way to know and connect compared to reading the information online or via other media.
"I would be more interested to know more about the featured creatives given the unique edible transformation of their information and situation in the pandemic"
-Joseph Wan, One of the interviewed creatives
4. The main challenges facing you now (if any).
The challenge now is to draft a feedback form to the final batch of audience and to measure how they are connected by the edibles and how is the edible experience providing a different impact in connecting creatives different than other conventional channels such as social media or other online media.
The current feedback form involves the following questions:
How many featured creative practitioners have you heard of in advance of having News Food: the unfortune cookies?
How many featured creative practitioners are you personally connected to in advance of having News Food: the unfortune cookies?
How many featured creative practitioners would you be interested to know more about after having News Food: the unfortune cookies?
How many featured creative practitioners would you follow on social media after having News Food: the unfortune cookies?
By having News Food: the unfortune cookies, you know more about the featured creatives.
Agree/Disagree
By having News Food: the unfortune cookies, you have more connection with the featured creatives.
Agree/Disagree
The edible experience of News Food provide more engaging way of connecting to other creatives compared to browsing social media.
The edible experience of News Food provide more engaging way of connecting to other creatives compared to looking at traditional or online media.
27th August
35. Unit 2 report draft
Unit 2 report
Cindy Chan Ho Yee
How can discursive food design foster connections across creative
disciplines in post-pandemic recovery?
Introduction: the aim of the study is to explore how can designed edible experience that delivers message can act as a means to build interpersonal connection and understanding between independent creatives of different disciplines, for example, creatives that work with different mediums, in the time of the pandemic that disconnects people physically and emotionally.
Explanation of key terms:
-
discursive food design: According to Tharp (2013), discursive design refers to the creation of utilitarian objects/services/interactions whose primary purpose is to communicate ideas—artefacts embedded with discourse.
Food design is the design of food, which is thought, perceived, contextualized, ritualized, implemented and consumed as an object. “The short history of food design begins when this type of action (manipulation of food elements)becomes self-reflective and is consciously integrated into the tradition of design.” Martí Guixé (2015) -
connections across creative disciplines: Interdisciplinary communication, discussion and networking that contribute to understanding and inspiration collaboration between creatives
-
post-pandemic recovery: Transition of returning to public, social experiences after lockdown and other experience in the pandemic
Why is this question important:
1. Personal reason:
-
- To fulfil an Interest on discursive design that involves multiple senses
-
- To sustain creative output as a cofounder of Deep Food
-
- To contribute as a creative practitioner
2. Professional reason:
-
- To establish food design in an asian perspective/ value
-
- To build knowledge on discursive food design
-
- Food design has almost no role in the food industry and consumption system yet
3. Gap:
-
- Physical disconnection: The Pandemic result in city lockdown and physical isolation of individuals, thus reconnection to social experience becomes a common desire
-
- Information disconnection: Algorithm in social media disconnect people by polarising people to form echo chamber, Social media can't address the real connection of people for change.
-
- Professional disconnection: disciplines are disconnected due to professionalism of industry
-
- Interdisciplinarity is essential to creativity which is required to reshape the society after pandemic
-
Cross-disciplinary collaboration as a needed action to response post-pandemic. Since not only one discipline can answer the situation, therefore collaboration is needed.
-
How we connect people with basic medium- food and eating
-
Food at a different level as an alternative socialising method to connect people, food's role as the basic social medium- shape culture of discussion- but how can it be different from traditional eating practice e.g. hotpot: it does not serve people for change/action, communication and collaboration but only gather people to consume food
Research method:
Primary research:
-
A questionnaire involving around 20 creative practitioners on their situation during the pandemic
-
One to one Interview with 10+ creative practitioners, each for more than 45 minutues, some including studio visits.
-
Edible material (cookie) experiment
Secondary:
-
Books and literature review on building inter-personal connection, food design and communication
Research Highlight:
Through primary and secondary research that informs the importance of interdisciplinary connection. The intervention is created based on a study of psychology by Aron A. (2013) which has tested the creation of connection by giving 36 questions to pairs of individuals and the study has proven that understanding and sharing of the same experience would build connection between individuals who are stranger to each other.
“The self-expansion model suggests there should be particularly strong benefits from participating together in activities that are experienced as self-expanding by virtue of being novel and challenging (and that there may be little or no benefit to the relationship from shared activities that are neither self-expanding nor generate the feelings of excitement associated with rapid self-expansion).” Aron A. (2013)
The intervention - News Food: unfortune cookie
Launching of three interventions, each requires design and distribution of edibles containing information of creatives- work and situation in the post-pandemic, as such highlight the mutual experience of the creatives and bring connection across disciplines and thus create connection across creative disciplines.
News Food: refers to series of curated food experiences to transform real-life news and stories into edible pieces.
-The first intervention involves bringing the trial version of unfortune cookie, as the first volume of news food to 10 creative practitioners from different creative disciplines. The fortune cookie embed message of luck in cookie, whereas the unfortune cookie connects people who shared the same unfortunate situation as Covid. Each package of News Food cookies contains a number of variations that each represent the response from one independent creative. By sharing the cookies with other creatives individuals, views and emotions towards the post-pandemic are distributed and thus making connections.
-The second intervention involves designing another set of edibles, the second volume of news food, which is also involving cookies, to connect the practitioner from the creative industry to design student graduates from PolyU School of Design.
-The third intervention (on-going) involves designing, producing and distributing the final set of unfortune cookies to 50 audiences who have the interest to connect with the featured creatives.
How:
By collecting responses of creatives on their reflection on the unfortunate pandemic and turn the feedback into the format of cookies, the study use discursive food design as a platform of exchange and connection across creative disciplines.
The intervention connect creativea by highlighting mutual experience of the challenging pandemic and the challenge being a creative individual in this difficult time.
Audience:
This research is targeted at creatives across disciplines because by job nature, creatives are a group of professionals who need and have the motivation to answer and respond to the current situation because they are fundamentally change-makers. Meanwhile, with some being self-employed, they could be more vulnerable to the current situation. This is also an accessible target group that is more acceptable to experimental design.
• Conclusion:
Strength: In the progress of Unit two I have made an effort to refine a better research question that gives more clarity to the target audience and the context of the issue. I have also spend much time on secondary research into discursive design, food design and theory regarding building connections between individuals. The above has given me a strong foundation to my project which I think is the strength of my research.
Weakness: I have challenges in gathering formal feedback from my stakeholders since some of them, being the audiences of the event outcome of my project are hard to reach out to after the event as such the feedback from the project is from informal conversations with them.
27th August 2021
36. Reflection
What did I gain from my action research?
-another experience in designing edibles
-connection with some creatives whom I do not know before
-to some extend connecting these creatives to people who are interested and among the industry
-I am not very satisfied with the outcome of the cookie because I think the design is not interesting and it does not provide anything new and exciting, in other words, it does not have the wow factor to me.
However, what is the wow factor and what is meant by interesting after all?
I think the issue is that I am not genuinely aligned with the question and objective that I set for this project, that the goals of the project are unclear and I did not set SMART goals.
This goes back to the question of what is the objective and goal of my project and even wider: the goal of taking this master course?
The goal of my project was to connect creatives in the post-pandemic, in my project feedback, my project actually achieved the result, even though on a very small scale in terms of quantity. However, there is no comparison in measuring this "small" or "big" scale, therefore it becomes a subjective feeling.
The question is how to set the right expectation of the project and the scale of impact?
Maybe one issue was that I was unsatisfied because I expected too much from the project at the beginning and it was unrealistic. As my project move on, I scaled down the project a lot while I was aware of the limited time and resources. In fact, given the time and resources, I put into my project, maybe the result was already extraordinary, however, how do we set the scale of measurement objectively?
Looking back, I have never aware of myself desiring a project with Wow factor and a result that is exciting to myself and others, at the same time I have never been able to set an objective scale measuring what is "wow factor" and "excitement", so my unsatisfaction is merely my gut feeling, despite the positive data from my feedback.
Another unsatisfaction I have is that I feel like I did not discover any new knowledge from my research. Through the process I have made a lot of effort reading articles and books and justifying my research question and intervention. but I have a feeling that the issue of food design is very big and the logic behind my project is over simple towards this complex topic.
It also becomes a question to me that "what is new knowledge after all?" for my action research i think it was fair to say that the product and the design process is “new experience “ for me or my stakeholders but for new knowledge, that seems so far away. And for example, I have learnt new knowledge (or fact) on psychology from my research reading but that is no new discovery to the world. I think it is very difficult to find and articulate new knowledge from my action research, and whats more the objective of my question seems more to be the impact of the intervention (the connection) than the new knowledge (the "how").
In quest of finding some examples of satisfactory intervention, I made a shout out to the master student whatsapp chat group:
I just wonder, how many of you are wholeheartedly satisfied with your project?? Since I am evaluating my project and I feel like I have difficulty in finding satisfaction from my action research so far and I would like to learn how any of you bring “successful” intervention and the process how you gained new knowledge as Richard mentioned in his lecture….
Just FYI, my process are all here :
https://www.deepfooddesign.com/learning-log
I am not saying my project is a failure…I know I have to acknowledge the effort I have placed into the project …it’s just I can’t even tell if it’s a failure or a success nor can I really see myself finding some exciting “new knowledge“ ….I am not sure how many of you share the same feeling like I do, but I would like some exchange since we should be going through the same process of action research
There are some feedback from fellow classsmates so far and some of them share the same situation and feeling like i do, we may be organizing a group reflection session.
30th September 2021
37. Reflection 2
I was making a summary of my previous reflection with organized thoughts to present it to my new tutor, Adam.
I was asking these questions to myself:
-
How should I proceed with my project?
-
What did I learn from my project and intervention so far?
-
What was my experience in my project?
and then I was listing out these facts and reflections for me to find out the answer to the above:
-
Facts and Evidence
-
Evaluation
-
Solutions and Take away
-
Ideas on Further Actions
-
Further thinking
1. Facts and Evidence
a. Research question: I refined my research questions for more than 10 versions until it was ” clear”
b. Intervention: I realized three rounds of interventions and created two rounds of early intervention, my interventions were involving more than 50 stakeholders at different levels of engagement. External feedback was collected in a quantitative and qualitative manner.
c. Evaluation: I kept my learning log updated throughout my project and recorded my reflection
-I think I have explored the method of Action Research through my project so far.
2. Evaluation
a. I felt very lost with my “clear” research question because I found it far away from my initial expectation with my project, it become a fulfilment of my assignment rather than a genuine enquiry.
b. The workload for my project was heavy as compared to the little impact of the intervention, I feel very unbalanced with my amount of effort and its return. This include feedback from my stakeholders which was not informing to give new knowledge to me.
c. I have been very genuine throughout the project and I am happy with the many reflections that I have on action research, however I still have a lot of questions towards the method. I think I have explored with the method of action research for at least once.
3. Solutions and take away
a. Have a clear criteria towards my research question that it should be SMART and genuine to myself.
b. Have reasonable expectation on the impact and explore effective solution that avoid excessive workload. Have a clear method of evaluation to measure the impact of the project.
c. think I should keep logging and I think the experience with action research is also a take away
4. Ideas on further actions
a. Evaluate the project further and ideate for follow up
b. Take the experience in Unit 2 and proceed with another cycle of WWHWI
c. Reflect on my experience of action research and consolidate my reflection in writing
Further thoughts:
What is the relevant kind of “knowledge” to gain from action research?
Action research is different from scientific research that “discover” knowledge, action research, instead, invent knowledge.
As such it takes a different method to evaluate the “findings” and “knowledge” from action research because it is a different kind of knowledge.
Is knowledge to be Invented?
It seems to me that the kind of knowledge from action research is more “cultural” than scientific or factual.
I discussed the above with my tutor Adam and my conclusion is that I should believe in my project and process and consider if it is realistic to have another large scale intervention. Adam also mentioned that we are generating knowledge for ourselves in our project process and that I should think about taking the most from what I have accomplished in the project.
I also wrote the following incident in a reflection session:
Incident: I was depressed about my intervention
what: I was disappointed about my project because I don't feel that I am confident with it at all and I struggle that I think my intervention doesn't create new knowledge
why: because I have yet to reflect on my process and discover its value (plus there is much room for improvement in my research- as it always has )
there were also practical medical reasons (thanks to vaccination) that affected my mental-emotional well being
what can be done:
evaluate
reflect
gain confidence to "believe in my process/project" (that's a direct quote from my tutor Adam)
what will be done next (my to-dos, from top to bottom):
review my feedback and course material
organise and write my reflection
revise my intervention
I think it captured a typical journey of applied imagination.
4th October 2021
38. Reflection 3
This week I have been evaluating my project with the ViP (vision in Product Design) model which I learned from the Research Lab.
There are two major insights:
1. In a narrow definition of "intervention", an intervention is validated and controlled and should be a full cycle of planning, doing, recording and reflecting, in this case , I think I have only created one full cycle of intervention because in my first two interventions they are not much controlled.
2. From the ViP model analysis I realized that my understanding on the existing context of communication and connection between creatives is weak.
I also clarified the assumption behind this project and the research insight that support the project and the intervention. and I reframed by research question with in mind that I do not need to fix my identity as a food designer to become part of the solution/ intervention.
I also tried with other models introduced in the research lab however for example the system mapping I do not know how I can use my result of analysis and I found most use from the ViP model because it helps me to identity gaps and new knowledge that I am introducing.
I feel like I start to connect the dots of my project and I have been learning from this experience and found it rewarding that I no longer feel depressed and unconfident about my project. I planned to dive deeper into the ViP model by reading the original book.
11th October 2021
39. Reflection 4
I am reflecting on my project by reading the original book of ViP Vision in Product Design this week, my insight is that I wasn't using the model as it was intended to be used and there are 8 steps in the guidebook for people to use the model the same as it is intended to be.
I start to realise that using the VIP model will take a lot of time in my project and especially if I am redoing experts interview to dive deeper into the analysis of the existing context. I ask myself 3 questions:
1. what are the exact domain that I want to explore from my project?
2. Do I really need to speak directly to experts in communication and collaborative platform?
3. what is the question that I should prioritise for now?
After discussions in the tutorial session I decided to focus on the following:
1. updating learning log
2. drafting the evaluative report in bullet point
3. improve navigation of this learning log site so that it is easier to read
18th October 2021
40. Reflection 5
In the last lecture, Richard mentioned the issue of insincere questions which lead me to reflect on my project. He illustrated that with an example of a student who is also a ceramist, and this student was very passionate about clay and her research question is framed in a way that she must use clay to realize it. In this example, the student in fact does not care about the research question but instead the medium of clay. This is therefore an insincere question because the question is only a tool to fulfil the requirements of the course and it is not her passion. It makes me think I may also be like that ceramist student who, instead of clay, insist on my identity as a food designer too much. I discussed this with my peers and I think I have sincere passion for food and discursive design however my question on bringing the connection between creatives in the post-pandemic was rather insincere, although using the context of post-pandemic seems to make much sense, however, honestly, I do not feel much connection with my research question but rather discursive food design itself.
The question is, what would be the sincere question for me in this case? or should I admit that I find nowhere to put this area of interest(discursive food design) into a context of use or applied imagination? should I admit that my research question is an eclectic one because I find no other question or place of applied imagination than my current question? and what should I do in such limited time left while figuring out my research question was insincere?
Considering the constraints and capacity, I listed the following possible options:
1. redefine the project domain as in ViP model from "connection/ creative network" to "discursive food design" - then the problem of no understanding in the current domain context is resolved since I am confident I have enough research ( for now) on the domain of discursive design and food design. Then proceed to the next steps as illustrated in ViP guidebook to determine the next move of my project.
2. present the project through online social media and concentrate effort on drafting questions or finding methods of gaining feedback. The focus being what can I( and the food design community) learn about discursive food design from the project of the Unfortune Cookie
3. stop the project output at this point and focus on analysis and evaluation
Factors of consideration:
1/ Limited time of the project: only 4 tutorial left
2/ ViP is for dealing with projects that redefine from the fundamental root instead of brief defined in detail.
3/ I am going to put the project on social media anyway
I think I am taking option 2 and leaving ViP for next chance even I feel connected and eager to try it.
25th October 2021
41. Evaluative report draft
Evaluative report
Cindy Ho Yee Chan
1. Introduction
How can discursive food design connect creatives with other professions to enhance their mutual awareness?
My project is about exploring the method and process of making discursive food design and its use in connecting creative practitioners to audiences across a variety of disciplines in the context of the post-pandemic where people have been disconnected from each other physically and emotionally for a period and now reconnecting after covid.
2. Background to the project
The project is based on assumptions that contributing to solving the issue of disciplinary disconnection in the post-pandemic is a crucial and practically achievable goal within the project time frame, and that awareness is the first step for inter-disciplinary connection. This project is also backed up by research insight from psychology that common yet novel experiences between individuals can be used to extend inter-personal connection, and therefore used the experience of the pandemic as a shared novel experience for making connections. The project is also based on research insight that multi-disciplinary collaboration and the inter-disciplinary approach are crucial in tackling complex contemporary world challenges and Sensory experience creative positive influences in communication and information processing. Therefore, the action research focuses on sensory edible design for inter-disciplinary awareness.
The project is positioned to be launching intervention with products within the timeframe of this master course. It is positioned as a local( In Hong Kong) project with online and offline engagement, both virtual and tangible.
3. Methodology
Substantiate amount of literature review on discursive design, food design and communication is conducted with the bibliography attached. This intervention is created mainly based on secondary research of a study of psychology by Aron A. (2013) , which has tested the creation of connection by giving 36 questions to pairs of individuals and the study has proven that understanding and sharing of the same experience would build connection between individuals who are stranger to each other.
“The self-expansion model suggests there should be particularly strong benefits from participating together in activities that are experienced as self-expanding by virtue of being novel and challenging (and that there may be little or no benefit to the relationship from shared activities that are neither self-expanding nor gen- erate the feelings of excitement associated with rapid self-expansion).”
Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are deployed in the project process, with intervention as explorative research. For example, a qualitative survey in form of a questionnaire with open-ended questions is distributed at the initial stage of the action research process. Quantitative data has been collected in online survey to gather feedback on the final product of the Unfotune Cookies.
Both primary and secondary research methods are deployed in the process as well:
Primary research:
-
A questionnaire involving around 20 creative practitioners on their situation during the pandemic
-
One to one Interview with 10+ creative practitioners, each for more than 45 minutues, some including studio visits.
-
Edible material (cookie) experiment
Secondary:
-
Books and literature review on building inter-personal connection, food design and communication
4. External testing and Intervention:
The action research process begins with defining the what-how-why-what if and followed by an early intervention of a curated tea gathering event, it is then informed by external feedback from the first interview survey conducted online and shaped into the idea of “News Food: Unforune Cookies” with 3 versions of interventions: being the trial phase, the client project with PolyU and the final product and dissemination of the Unfortune Cookies.
The intervention - News Food: Unfortune cookie
Launching of three interventions, each requires design and distribution of edibles containing information of creatives- work and situation in the post-pandemic, as such highlight the mutual experience of the creatives and bring connection across disciplines and thus create connection across creative disciplines.
News Food: refers to a series of curated food experiences to transform real-life news and stories into edible pieces.
-The first intervention involves bringing the trial version of unfortune cookie, as the first volume of news food to 10 creative practitioners from different creative disciplines. The fortune cookie embeds the message of luck in cookie, whereas the unfortune cookie connects people who shared the same unfortunate situation as Covid. Each package of News Food cookies contains a number of variations that each represent the response from one independent creative. By sharing the cookies with other creative individuals, views and emotions towards the post-pandemic are distributed and thus making connections.
-The second intervention involves designing another set of edibles, the second volume of news food, which is also involving cookies, to connect the practitioner from the creative industry to design student graduates from PolyU School of Design. The School of Design version of this project features a series of snacks each inspired by one graduate project at the annual show. A selection of 12 projects, edited in several themes, was presented as “edible newspapers” at the starter experience for the School of Design show 2021 guided tour. The experience is aimed at giving edible transformation of student projects to impress the participants and generate interest towards student projects. To make the experience more immersive, Deep Food engaged several student helpers to act as “paper girls” at the starter experience to deliver newspapers to the audience.The event has engaged more than 40 people in the creative industry, who were introduced to student graduates and their projects by cookies that are related to their creative work, the immersive experience connect creatives by using discursive food design and multi-sensory experience.
-The third intervention involves designing, producing and distributing the final set of unfortune cookies with two zines that contain articles on the story of the interviewed creatives to audiences who have an interest to connect with the featured creatives. By collecting responses of creatives on their reflection on the unfortunate pandemic and turning the feedback into the format of cookies, the study uses discursive food design as a platform of exchange and connection across creative disciplines. The intervention connects creative practioners by highlighting the mutual experience of the challenging pandemic and the challenge of being a creative individual in this difficult time.
5. Reflection
a. At first, I tried to make my question very clear to my tutor in Unit 2, however, I felt very lost with my “clear” research question because I found it far away from my initial expectation with my project, it become a fulfilment of my assignment rather than a genuine enquiry.
b. The workload for my project was heavy as compared to the little impact of the intervention, I feel very unbalanced with my amount of effort and its return. This include feedback from my stakeholders which was not informing me to give new knowledge.
c. I have been very genuine throughout the project and I have written a large amount of reflections on my learning log, however, I still have a lot of questions about the method. I think I have explored the method of action research at least once.
d. I am very happy with the amount of external feedback that I get from my stakeholder: I have asked the creative practitioners whom I interviewed to give feedback on the cookies, some of them raised practical issues to facilitate better reading and eating experience such as better binding of the newspaper print, some are curious about the choice of cookies as the final food format.
In general, the creative practitioners whom I interviewed have an interest to know and connect with other creative practitioners who were featured on the news food and agree that the cookie format, as an edible experience is a more engaging way to know and connect compared to reading the information online or via other media.
"I would be more interested to know more about the featured creatives given the unique edible transformation of their information and situation in the pandemic"
-Joseph Wan, One of the interviewed creatives
Quantitative data collected from an online surveys from the audience of the Unfortune Cookies also shows that the edible format can attract more interest than other traditional media on connecting creatives practitioner and sharing their stories.
6. Conclusion
To conclude, I have learned the circular process of action research and intervention, and I have gained skills in deploying different methodologies of research onto my creative project. In the future, I would like to continue on my sincere interest in exploring the method and use of discursive food design.
Bibliography:
1. Ideas on food and eating:
Marinetti, F. T. (1989). The Futurist Cookbook.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2013). Eat Design.
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2020). Food Design Small
Stummerer, S., & Hablesreiter, M. (2009). Food Design XL.
2. On food design:
M. Guixe. (2015) Food Designing. Corraini Edizioni
Vogelzang, M. (2008). Eat Love. Bis Publishers. Amsterdam.
Zampollo, F. (2016). What is Food Design? The complete overview of all Food Design sub-disciplines and how they merge. Academia, https://www. academia. edu/30048438/What_is_Food_Design_The_complete_overview_of_all_Food_Design_sub-disciplines_and_how_they_merge.
Zampollo, F. (2015). Welcome to food design. International Journal of Food Design
Zampollo, F. (2013). Introducing Food Design. In: Cleeren, S. & Smith, A. (Eds.) Food Inspires Design. Oostkamp, Belgium: Stichting Kunstboek.
3. On Human-food-interaction:
Dolejšová, M. (2018). Edible speculations: Designing for human-food interaction (Doctoral dissertation, National University of Singapore (Singapore)).
Dolejšová, M. (2020). Edible speculations: designing everyday oracles for food futures. Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs.
4. On speculative and critical design, discourse and communications:
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.
Malpass, M. (2017). Critical design in context: History, theory, and practices. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ruiz, J. R. (2009). Sociological discourse analysis: Methods and logic. In Forum qualitative sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative social research (Vol. 10, No. 2).
Shannon, C. E. (2001). A mathematical theory of communication. ACM SIGMOBILE mobile computing and communications review, 5(1), 3-55.
Tharp, B. M., & Tharp, S. M. (2013). Discursive design basics: Mode and audience. Nordes, 1(5).
5. On food:
The School of Life. (2019). Thinking and Eating: Recipe to Nourish and Inspire. The School of Life.
S. Q. Wang (2014). Food Player. Page One Publishing
25 October 2021
42. Reflection 6
I have had a tutorial with Richard today and below are a summary of our discussion:
1. It could be over-worrying that my research question is an insincere one since my research question is backed by research and motivated from my project development since the "Change I want to see" Project, which has been always genuine. I think it is again going back to the idea of confidence with the project.
2. How can I "close the loop" of this project by tracking how did the unfortunate cookies make connections or awareness between its eaters and the beneficiaries (i.e. the featured creatives) how can I measure the success of this project? how can my feedback support the impact of the project?
3. Am I going to control who is receiving the cookie in order to make sure the biggest impact and draw the biggest interest from the audience? How much should I control the process of distribution if I am asking classmates to bake the cookies for me by giving them recipes for the cookie?
4. How can I understand how discursive food design is facilitating connection and awareness particularly, that it acts as a more novel and effective medium?
5. Study the anthropology of gift-giving to study the mechanics of appropriateness of gift and its cultural factor.
I am planning on the following as the next step of my research:
1. To discuss the launching method online via social media and website and offline at the festival
2. To discuss possible questions to ask to collect informing feedback that contributes to the knowledge of discursive food design.
3. working on the reflective journal and evaluative report
27th October 2021
43. Reflection 7
I am summarizing the comments from the last tutorials with Adam and Cai in the last few weeks.
1. On the issue of the question being not ambitious enough as compared to the product of the Unfortune Cookies:
Cai mentioned that it could be too safe and humble to use phrases like "enhancing mutual awareness of creatives" that the question could be more bold and ambitious to point out that there is a lack of connection between the different disciplines.
I agreed with this can I think I have chosen these safer, more humble wordings because by then I was unsure how far can this project go and I wanted to be secured in terms of not over-committing to unrealistic hope. And I think it is the right time to be braver to set the question a bit further as I have gained more confidence that my intervention has areas that are promising. As such I changed my question from:
How can discursive food design connect creatives to other professions to enhance mutual awareness in the post-pandemic?
to
How can discursive food design ignite cross-disciplinary creative collaborations by creating resonance from the common experience in the post-pandemic?
with learning from the suggestion on adjustment of question that Adam and Cvestana made for my project.
I think the current question tell a more precise story of my intervention.
2. On changing the mentality of stakeholders being beneficiaries but instead co-creator
Cai also mentioned that it would be more positive for the intervention to give the stakeholders: the creative practitioner involved as co-creator rather than beneficiaries. Since the latter is more passive in terms of their participation and as such they may not have so much ownership to the outcome, and as co-creator the project can have a more mutual and further impact in connecting creatives and sparking collaborations.
I too agree with this comment but I think with the very limited time I am left in my unit 3 it is not quite feasible to launch the co-creation version of the Unfortune Cookie project, however, this might be a continuation of the project.
I am considering whether it is in any case better to have a co-creation project than a project in which I actively make the edible transformation for the interviewees: the difference can be, as from the discussion with Adam in our tutorial, that the project will be open-sourced (and also out of my control) if I am pushing the creatives to co-create instead.
I think it takes a lot of skills and consideration in defining the "openness" of a project, as I recall my experience of organizing an inter-disciplinary open platform on design with my fellow schoolmates in my bachelor study. I think for a project to sustain it is crucial to strike a balance where the project is kept alive through an appropriate amount of governance (maybe there exist a better word) or otherwise, the project could have risk to become a failure to sustain as the passion of the community fades or in the worst case even create harmful consequences if conflicts occurred in the process.
3. on the next and the final step for unit 3
In this particular case of the Unfortune Cookie, I think it is more reasonable to keep it as a close design process owned by myself since I think it has already fulfilled the impact of connection that I was aiming for. However, any other people can always take this idea of using food as a medium further and create their own version of discursive food, that is going to be another story although it could be one possibility of a positive ripple effect. Therefore, I think it is reasonable in terms of the time frame that the rest of the intervention is to publish the Unfortune Cookie as much as I can through online social media as well as the festival. For that, I am requesting an extra tutorial with Zuleika, who is in charge of the execution of the festival, and I am hoping to discuss the best way to present the Unfortune Cookie at the festival. Meanwhile, I think it is also important to evaluate the project by measuring the connection made through the project.
4. the list of next action
for my next action, I will be wrapping up my project with the final execution of my intervention as well as writing the complete draft of my evaluative report and making my presentation.
-
adjust the intervention part of my evaluation report with Adam's comments on my draft
-
complete the reflection part of my report by summarizing all my reflections and with Richards prompts for the report
-
ask the kitchen the earliest delivery date of 10 new sets of the Unfortune Cookies
-
create social media posts to share the Unfortune Cookies on Instagram page
-
discuss with Zuleika about the presentation at festival
-
organize logistics of shipping the Unfortune Cookie to the UK within November if in case of physical show and ship the cookies for classmates to consume only if the physical show is not possible
-
complete the evaluation part as I finish the social media launch of the unfortune cookie and sort out the presentation plan and logistics at the festival.
-
Design and sort out logistics for the set-up at the festival and give information for the online show
12 th November 2021
44. Review -part 1
The following blogpost would be my final review for my project's reflection part in the evaluative report. Each of the following blog posts would be referring to a paragraph in the reflection. The full evaluative report is available for download here.
The first point I made in my reflection was about clarity on action research intervention as a cyclical process:
"I have gained a clear concept of action research and intervention as a cyclical process which I found essential and beneficial to my project. Such a concept includes knowledge and practice on steps of the process, which flows from an uncertain and divergent start to a clear and converging end and continues by looping this cycle. The process has invited me to extend from the comfort zone to overcome the fear zone and acquire new knowledge from within the learning zone and growth zone throughout the stages of the project."
-up until my third intervention, I do not think I have got the idea of a full cycle of intervention until the autumn research lab, where a step by step cycle of intervention was clearly presented.
-the cycle of intervention includes the full process from research to development to stakeholder feedback and reflection and until the point of autumn research lab, I discovered I have only got one round of intervention in this definition since I have not reflected substantially before my third intervention.
-if I am given another chance of doing an intervention, I would allow myself time for more cycles, because the iterative process is informing a lot of insight to create an appropriate intervention for target stakeholders.
-some emotional challenges happened in the fear zone of my learning journey, which I felt very unconfident about my research and project. After the episode, I accepted the challenges as a natural process and overcame them by extending myself to the learning zone which I accept the incompetency of my project and try to gain insight from the part that I am not satisfied with.
- this reminds me of a piece of reflection I have written in a class workshop:
Reflection: I was depressed from my intervention
what: I was disappointed about my project because I don't feel that I am confident with it at all and I struggle that I think my intervention doesn't create new knowledge
why: because I have yet to reflect on my process and discover its value (plus there is much room for improvement in my research- as it always has )
there were also practical medical reasons (thanks to vaccination) that affected my mental-emotional well being
what can be done:
evaluate
reflect
gain confidence to "believe in my process/project" (that's a direct quote from my tutor Adam)
what will be done next (my to-dos, from top to bottom):
review my feedback and course material
organise and write my reflection
revise my intervention
-Looking back I think the reflection part of my intervention, which I have only done it more extensively until I made my third intervention, is where I have been able to push myself from the fear zone to the learning zone by reminding myself of the objectives of my projects and evaluate if my projects are delivering these set objectives.
- Until this point, I am not exactly sure if I am in the growth zone, however, I found the discussion with Adam about the zoning of the process very interesting. It was because from the discussion I learned that it is a natural research process to jump between different zones of learning/ fear/ growth, and even it is up to our own will to push ourselves back and forth in these zones, whenever we want and however ways that create the best learning experience for ourselves.
29th November 2021
45. Review- part 2
The second point I made in my reflection was about personal determination to trust the process throughout the project:
"I have gained confidence in the research process which was crucial throughout the project. A massive amount of uncertainty was experienced at the start of my research journey. Through such conditions, I realised the importance of being consistent and determined with a sincere research intention. In a practical sense, I realised that trust and respect on each step of the creative process being a decision under project vision by far was essential to create an accountable outcome of an action research intervention. "
-Throughout the process, I have learned that I was being unconfident about my project and even until now I am still seeking this inner confidence.
-In particular, in a discussion in a final tutorial with my tutor Adam and our tutorial group where we were discussing the difference between styles of "being well-organized" between our classmates. I was intrigued by the opinion that I could be less confident in my research process and methodology because I was very eager to test out each model/ framework presented in the research lab. At first, I was feeling inferior when I think of this idea of lacking confidence. However, as I reflect now, I feel like my drive was being curious and adventurous in terms of how I enjoyed testing if different models/ framework works on my project. Although I agree that this urge of seeking a method in an outward manner could also be seen as a lack of confidence since I should acknowledge the fact that it is normal that not every model/framework works for every project and each of the models has its subsets and as such limitations. Up to this point, I am still unsure if this outward seeking manner means lack of confidence or curiosity, but perhaps it could be two sides of the coin.
- the rather disappointing feeling of inferiority reminds me of Donna Haraway's idea of "staying with the trouble" and her anti-thesis of dualism, that she disagrees with the dualism of, for example, self/other or in this case it could be elaborated as failure/success or superiority/ inferiority, that it could be more helpful to think of trouble and failure as just another normal, neutral state about the project ( in her manifesto, that was about the world as a whole, however in case of this project its much smaller in scale) with this mindset, I think I would define my status as a neutral and natural curiosity towards new models/ framework and a desire to iterate them in practice. And my "lack of confidence" could perhaps be defined by myself as "a natural urge to improve and advance"
-On another note, I also received feedback on my evaluative report from my friend, Dr Bruce Wan, who is also in academia, he mentioned the idea of being responsible in a research process, that as a researcher we are accountable for conducting the research professionally and in an academic manner and I found this idea intriguing, which I hope myself to be responsible and accountable for my research process, and as such it is not only to myself that I have to trust my research process, it is for the sake of my research to be a responsible one that I need to have a certain affirmation to my project. I feel like being sincere and consistent could be a way to achieve this ideal status.
-On the last note on this point, I would like to bring back some reflection I wrote earlier because I think they are revealing the ability of reflection as a method to gain the above-mentioned affirmation:
"a. At first, I tried to make my question very clear to my tutor in Unit 2, however, I felt very lost with my “clear” research question because I found it far away from my initial expectation with my project, it become a fulfilment of my assignment rather than a genuine enquiry.
b. The workload for my project was heavy as compared to the little impact of the intervention, I feel very unbalanced with my amount of effort and its return. This includes feedback from my stakeholders who was not informed me to give new knowledge.
c. I have been very genuine throughout the project and I have written a large number of reflections on my learning log, however, I still have a lot of questions about the method. I think I have explored the method of action research at least once.
d. I am very happy with the amount of external feedback that I get from my stakeholder: I have asked the creative practitioners whom I interviewed to give feedback on the cookies, some of them raised practical issues to facilitate better reading and eating experience such as better binding of the newspaper print, some are curious about the choice of cookies as the final food format.
In general, the creative practitioners whom I interviewed have the interest to know and connect with other creative practitioners who were featured on the news food and agree that the cookie format, as an edible experience is a more engaging way to know and connect compared to reading the information online or via other media. "
Looking back I discover myself gaining affirmation naturally while I wrote the above reflection with a brain-dump process in which I typed whatever comes to my mind. I think I can observe myself discovering the project fits into the initial set objective of the research in the process of writing my feelings towards the projects and reviewing facts about the intervention.
29th November 2021
46. Review- part 3
The third point I made in my reflection was about the development of an ability to reflect on and evaluate action research as the project proceeds:
"The project has stretched my ability to reflect on and evaluate the action research for both the project of the action research and on the subject of action research itself. The process has given me insights into the multiple ways and approaches to evaluate a research project, from qualitative to quantitative analysis in terms of feedback collection and from thematic to meta-analysis in terms of project evaluation. In the notion of action research itself, the process has given me new insights on the boundaries and possibilities of building new knowledge from practising action research."
-Throughout the process I have had much confusion towards the idea of building new knowledge, I used to worry a lot that my research process is not building any new knowledge no matter how much secondary research I have dug into. There was a period I misunderstood that we only build new knowledge to ourselves in our research process. It was until the autumn research lab where a clear definition using the VIP model was presented, which new knowledge means bringing context 1 ( existing context) to context 2 ( desirable future context with the intervention) by the introduction of a new knowledge framework/ new interaction/ new product.
- However I felt like the above also has its pre-assumption and therefore I brought this question up in one of the tutorials where I asked what are the pre-assumption/ the elementary, fundamental assumption of the notion of applied imagination and action research, and why is it not called empirical research when there existed such concept in the academia. In the discussion my tutor Adam mentioned that the assumption could be the intrinsic idea coming from the 'change I want to see' and translating it to intervention through a process into the world of uncertainty (as such we have a project named the box of uncertainty), and that applied imagination is an iterative and aspirational concept of conducting research. Perhaps I was being subjective, I think the answer shows the beauty of this subject I studied.
- Adam also mentioned the idea of layers of structure of data/ knowledge/wisdom and then impact, and the danger that all these models frame the world as linear rather than presenting or acknowledging the complexity of the real world (I think it was because a framework/model is by-definition a simplified way of looking and defining) I agree that such structure of information is never linear, and it does not end with impact: that impact can then become ripples of influence which in turn becomes data again. In view of the structure of knowledge, I think it could be rather like a network/ an architecture/ an organism rather than seeing it as simple as a line that advances in a linear order.
47. Review- part 4
In the conclusion part of my evaluative report, I wrote:
"To conclude, by deploying various research methodologies, this action research project creates new knowledge on the cyclical intervention process for me. I found that such a cyclical action research process is essential to initiate, develop, co-create and evaluate a creative project that aims at making a socio-cultural impact. In particular to this project, discursive food design is explored as a method and a medium to create a connection between creatives to initiate further cross-disciplinary collaboration. It is hoped that the method and the extended use of discursive edible design will be further explored in the future."
- I would like to further elaborate the point about extending the use of discursive edible design, with a piece I have written recently:
About food creation
In mind, the God who is both three and one can sit on his right side because we cannot take the words literally, and from the moment this idea is established, words transcend symbols to become metaphors. If so, as I designed with food, can I interpret the tomato juice into the blood of a lion and turn the Peacock heads into the eyes of Mars? Push this idea further, that dining will become the carrier of novels, the sound and rhyme of poetry; the connection starts from the material senses, and it goes beyond sublimation from the same point. So how can we understand the meaning of eating?
In the visual world, a green circle plus three black bars becomes a watermelon. In the world of hearing, happiness becomes a melody. Then why is Apple just Apple?
A reflection as I read and translate from Chinese this piece I wrote last year again :
An apple is already beyond an apple...but I still believe it can go deeper in terms of conscious content.
-I feel the experience of this course has allowed me to explore the methodology of applied imagination and I believe I am equipped to use this method to push further the idea of Deep Food in the above sense.
-This reminds me of the question from Adam, that I need to think again the idea of Deep Food, being creating food for thought, on the issue of its purpose and stakeholders again, I feel like this is another process of the applied imagination cycle: which begins from the box of uncertainty, then the change I want to see, and then the what, why, how, what if...and I believe this iterative cycle can loop endlessly while I hope in each loop it goes into more depth.
- I feel like the above makes a self-satisfying ending line of my reflective journal. :) It was an enjoyable process.
-Thank you for reading to this end.
48. The Epilogue
So long, and finally the end of the journey of MAAI! Full pdf of the Unfortune Cookies zine can be downloaded here
