Tech can re-frame our relation to food
The sensory experience of food can be mediated by technology. In order to better understand how, cross-disciplinary thinking is necessary.
“We need to be aware of to what extent our senses are involved in perceiving our surroundings, and at the same time in helping to shape them.” — Olafur Eliasson
On September 7 we hosted the Techfestival meetup Perceptions of Nature and Locality in Relation to Food at Kbh Madhus. 80+ people had signed up to attend this meetup, where we focused on perception and sensory experience as a starting point for our discussion on food, nature, locality and technology.
We wanted to bring people from different disciplines and industries together to share knowledge informed by different perceptions. To facilitate this, we had invited four experts with in-depth knowledge from each of their fields to give their perspectives on the question of our relation to food through technology.
Landscapes are cultural history
Jonna Majgaard Krarup, Architect MAA and Associate Professor PhD at KADK, talked about how our perception of landscape has changed over time.
In pre-modern times, landscape was related to hard work and to the living environment. In modern time, landscape became something that was contemplated and perceived aesthetically. In pre-modern time food production was a part of the landscape. In modern time, food production became large scale, standardized, rational and distanced. Landscape has become an aesthetic object that overshadows landscape as a living environment.
Nature is complex
Søren Espersen, MA in Cultural Sociology, emphasized the immense complexities of nature.
We tend to forget that nature is comprised of interactions between plants, fungi and bacteria, which are fundamental to our whole experience of food. Variations in nature give locality to food, and the possibility of developing small-scale food production based on different plants, spices etc. To do so it is important that we are able to detect the differences and composition of e.g. lactic bacteria, from which we can develop a variety of local products.
Technology can work as an enabler in that regard. It can provide us with the necessary information about the natural processes and parameters, from which we can improve and control our techniques and products. On the negative side, technology can lead to simplification, monoculture and the production of less local varieties of products, and we need to be alert for ‘technological fixes’ where tech comes in between human and nature in the production and consumption of foods.
Technology can connect to nature
Foodtech entrepreneur Frederik Lean Hansen started asking, what ‘being closer to nature’ actually means. He suggested that being closer to something requires an in-depth understanding of it, which he argued technology could help enable.
Frederik runs an open source foodtech initiative that works with vertical farming (growstack.org) and has experience with growing plants pesticide-free in a closed system. According to Frederik, this type of soil-less growing makes it possible to measure and detect the compositions and parameters for how to create the best conditions for the plants, which can lead to better produce.
He emphasized that by open sourcing a non-patented technology; comes an opportunity to decentralize part of the food production system and thereby enabling local and more varied food production. Just as this alternative way of producing food can happen in cities and doesn’t require the deployment of our soil.
Food is experiences
Finally, food artist Augusta Sørensen took us through her process of staging a dinner. Her main objective is to make people more present during the meal, to open their senses and make them eat more attentively.
Some of the methods she uses are the creation of trust, use of intuition, and facilitation of a shared experience. She likes to challenge peoples’ expectations, and have her guests interact. When these elements are at play, the sensory aspect of a food experience can be emphasized.
Sensorium, the science and art of perception
The overall discussion was framed by the idea of ‘sensorium’, which Merriam-Webster defines as, “the parts of the brain or the mind concerned with the reception and interpretation of sensory stimuli.”
With early modernization, there was, and in many ways still is, a shift away from sensorium within human experience. As nature became more and better understood, the structures of sensorium became more defined. Nature started to have rules. Air should not be polluted. Temperatures should be comfortable. Water should be clean. With the development of air-condition systems and temperature controls, sensorium could be managed and desensitized, and this is where the paradox lies. As science and technology continue to quantify the natural world, it also provides an opportunity to question our perception of that world — How do we see? How do we feel? How do we taste? As a result our own field of sensorium expands.
In the end, we didn’t talk about sensorium in itself. The reason might be that sensorium is not connected with the rational mind and therefore is difficult to express in words. It needs to be experienced through the senses.
“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense” — Kahlil Gibran
Rather then conclude with answers, Jonna Majgaard Krarup raised new questions: what is the role of technology? What kind of technology? What kind of food? What kind of environments? What kind of landscapes? What kind of nature?
The answers change depending on whom we ask. We learned about the challenges we are facing in the age of the Anthropocene, a time where the human impact on earth’s ecosystems has spurred a new geological age. And we contextualized the discussion by looking at our historical past and by taking a closer look at processes in nature. In the end, Augusta made us remember that aspects such as intuition, presence and trust are crucial when discussing this subject.
We think this kind of cross-disciplinary debate is important to have, since it can shed light on the subject from different but equally important angles. These cross-disciplinary discussions and explorations are critical to rethink the future direction of food.
The piece was written by Taryn Cullen Humphrey and Tina Ryoon Andersen.
