A collaborative work between Deep Food (Cindy Chan and Heinrik Ng)

Joseph Wan (MA in Data Driven Design, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht)​​​

 

Food-mediated Action Research on ‘Human-Subject-AI-Interaction’ for Co-being. 

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How might the latest open-source AI technologies enable new ways of 'Human-Subject-AI-Interaction’ to gear humans towards better Co-being relationships with and within the surrounding environment? 

 

This is an experimental creative project by Deep Food (Cindy Chan and Heinrik Ng) and Joseph Wan. The team that brings ‘Board of Dinner, XAI for Empathy’ to the London Design Festival and Dutch Design Week 2024. This year, the team will turn the latest available technologies into more sensorially interactive creative work that engages its audience in experimenting with the humanities of Co-being. 

 

The R&D fund will enable the three creative practitioners to conduct a new experiment with their AI for Good project to explore a multi-sensory edible format of interaction. The team wishes to bring together three research focuses, each led by one team member, covering methodology (Cindy), technology (Joseph), and ideology (Heinrik), which will lead to creative proof-of-concept proposals and early stakeholder tests for a showcase after the research and development phase. The team of three propose such a new way of collaborating, which they believe would result in creative practice that deeply connects and responds to the fast-changing world’s challenges, positioning creative design and humanities at the centre of the exploration of the latest AI tech in application. Such exploration will involve literature review, research insights consolidation and presentation, creative ideation, hands-on prototyping and early phase testing, leading at last (of the R&D phase) to multiple proposals of creative outcomes involving larger audiences, presented through a pitch deck for further display.  

 

With professional and academic experience in AI, Data-Driven Design and Automation for manufacturing, Joseph will be the leading the tech perspective with investigation on latest developments in AI ethnics and technologies, in particular the latest open-source Multiple-Agent model and AI model refinement which has unlocked new potential Human-AI cooperation in a much accessible and efficient way, and local model development tailored for creative practice and for new ways of ‘Human-Subject-AI Interaction’. 

 

Deep Food’s cofounder, Cindy, will be leading the methodology perspective. She will bring in her Action Research angle from her MA studies in Applied Imagination of Creative Industries, which provided her with hands-on experience of the entire Action Research process. Cindy propose to dive deeper into the latest development of such practice and its surrounding context (such as but not limited to Research Through Design frameworks, critical and speculative design) to gain better understanding on the context of Action Research to inspire and inform the creative method of this project and also theorising their methodology to inspire up and coming collaborative team of cross-disciplinary experimental creative practice as they carry forward their creative experiment. As Deep Food is experienced in food-based creative work in the field of public art, she will also bring Deep Food’s perspective on incorporating Action Research into the creative process and outcomes involving food and immersive, multi-sensory experiences. Her process will involve literature reviews and research on practice-based researchers' bodies of knowledge.

 

The other half of Deep Food, Heinrik Ng, will be focusing on the ideology arch. Bring his experience from Deep Food’s public engagement for multiple art and creative platforms, which allows him to navigate through public interest and the ability to bridge academic discourse and participatory creative process. He proposes reviewing literature on Co-being, stemming from concepts of empathy, compassion and entanglement.

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Below are images of the team's creative practice; their existing portfolio demonstrates the expertise and capacity that they will contribute to their new London-based practice. More information on each project is found on this homepage: www.deepfooddesign.com and Joseph Wan's website: www.Josephw.space 

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