Exhibition Scenes

Little Reunion was a celebratory picnic held on 27th Sept. 2020 at the Parco Lambro in Milan conceived by us in order to commemorate Zhōng Qiū (the Chinese Moon Festival). We Chinese also call it Xiǎo Tuán Yuán (小团圆), from which its English name, Little Reunion is derived. It's a reunion of the MOON, a reunion between old and new FRIENDS, a reunion between HUMAN and NATURE. It's also a reunion between the two founders after a long quarantine period staying separated in Italy and Germany.

All participants were led to the meeting point via an icebreaking activity - finding their 'Secret Parcels' pinned onto the trees along the way to the picnic point. In each parcel, the attendee found crockery and cultery with their names attached.

The event was also used to launch our new project, a pair of molds for making moon cakes, a typical delicacy for this celebration. The molds were produced by 3d printer and made of food-grade material

interview

12.2020

correspondent interview

11.2020

interview

07.2020

interview

03.2019

behind the scene, research path

11.2018

︎︎︎ Edible Invisible - 2018 荷兰设计周

travel story, exhibition report

09.11.2018

behind the scene, making story

04.2018

travel story, exhibition report

24.04.2017

Edible Invisible - 2018 荷兰设计周

09.11.2018 | 悦&溪婧

于荷兰南城埃因霍芬举办的荷兰设计周(DDW2018)，今年的主题设定为：如果不是我们，那么是谁？

If not us, then who?

本届设计周长达九天，由八大展区组成，围绕八大展区展开：
- 数字化 (DIGITAL)
- 艺术&收藏 (ART&COLLECTABLES)
- 新型材料 (NEW MATERIALS)
- 社群设计 (SOCIAL DESIGN)
- 生化设计 (BIO DESIGN)
- 制造者&工艺 (MAKERS & CRAFT)
- 未来居住 (FUTURE LIVING)
- 建筑&公共空间 (ARCHITECTURE&PUBLIC SPACE)

作为食物设计爱好者，我们专程参观了作为本届设计周大展之一，由荷兰食品&设计研究所(The Dutch Institute of Food&Design)主办的微生物主题食物设计展——“可食而不可见的”(EDIBLE INVISIBLE)。



作为每年都会呈现精彩食物设计的食品大使馆(Embassy of Food)的核心展览，展览的主题将聚焦于我们所食之物中不可见的成分——微生物，以及与之相关的食物与设计。微生物无处不在而且很大程度上影响着我们的生活，但却常常被人们忽视。我们的肠道菌群以及所吃的食物不仅影响着我们的身体健康，同时也影响着我们的情绪、行为甚至味觉。

展厅的入口由一条临时搭建的隧道组成，工作人员会给每一个参观者分发一只特殊的笔，写下的字迹只能用特殊的荧光灯灯照亮，参观者可将自己对关于微生物的发问写在墙上，而笔的背面则是荧光灯用来查看其他参观者写下的问题。



此处摘录一些主办方对参观者的发问：

为了预防人口增长所带来的粮食短缺问题，奥地利设计师 Julia Schwarz 带来了 Unseen Edible，一种基于地衣(英文为lichen，经常被与moss混谈)的食物。苔藓本身是一种非常有效的药材，它们甚至被证实可以在火星上生长。Unseen Edible向观者们提供了一个把苔藓作为日常食材广泛食用的社群，以提供一种新的饮食可能。

我们平均每天都通过马桶冲走1.4升的尿液，而这要消耗33升的水资源。如果我们能够将身体的这一部分废弃物循环再使用呢？荷兰设计师Eva van Strien、Anne van Strien以及Thieu Custers带来了Anthroponix，通过对尿液的成分研究，他们发现尿液中含有三种传统肥料中所包含的成分：氮、磷、钾。而Anthroponix是一个将尿液提取加工为肥料供植物生长的家用肥料制作系统，通过加入乳酸菌使尿液发酵可排除潜在的病原菌并削减异味。一个人一年的尿液可供养250公斤的小麦生长，相当于3000餐饭！




传统食物发酵过程所丢弃的发酵水通常被认为是无用的，南非设计工作室Studio H的设计师Hannerie Visser以装置的形式将不同的发酵食物的汁液进行搭配向观者提供了包装精致的九种“香水”，鼓励大家进行“鉴赏”，装置的旁边附有一台食物脚本打印机，脚本的内容是设计师从Youtube上的真实反馈中收集而来，以此来引起大家的深思——不同的文化也时常会被它所引以为傲的珍贵的经典菜肴所嘲讽，而这些“香水”正是希望能提醒人们：我们所食之物没有不同。


通过由德国设计师Ina Turinsky和Andreas Wagner带来的 Nutrient Solution 向人们提供了一种家用供养微藻的方式。三个盘子代表了三种不同的生长环境以生长出三种不同的菜式。唾液与呼吸，通过日常的行为“饲养”你的微藻，10-14天的精心照料你将会得到一盘精美的微藻美味。



由波兰设计师Roza Janusz带来的 Scoby Packaging 是由细菌发酵所“编织”而成的红茶菌包装纸，这层菌膜使包装内的产品延长了保质期同时也可以同产品一起食用或者作为混合肥料使用，也许未来的包装将不再破坏土壤而是让土壤更加富饶。


Mela 是一个投机性服务公司，它的设计师Maria Apud Bell向使用者提供了一种由细菌混合物制作的针对健康问题而设计的的巧克力，通过一个一次性的电子药丸检测人体中的微生物群进而得到人体的细菌需求。通过这个巧克力药丸，使用者可以通过对自己健康状况的了解进而减缓压力、提高睡眠质量、控制糖类和脂类代谢，提高情绪状态并减少消化问题。







2011年IBM发布了超级计算机Watson，一台创新的、有认知能力的计算机系统，它可以对大量数据进行处理与分析并从经验中学习。在这个技术背景下，来自荷兰的设计师 Katinka Verzendaal 产生了人工智能学习对美食节影响的思考，并带来了模拟项目Chef versus Watson。在这个人机合作的美食项目中，Watson将创建一个食材清单以及每个食材相对应的食材组合。食者选择一个食材，Watson将通过对被选择食材的分析筛选出最佳的食物搭配方案以得到最佳美味。而厨师的角色则是通过他们的厨艺对食材进行加工以呈现出一道佳肴。

一块酸酵头(sourdough starter)是野生酵母与细菌的培养物，通常用来制作面包。这些微生物被赋予重任让酵母面包有着微微的酸味且充满嚼劲。当储存一块酸酵头的时候，要确保它保持活力并且健康，使它呼吸、分泌、复制并回应。塞浦路斯设计师Olivia Ioannou通过 Microbial Symphony 给酸酵头提供了一次发声的机会，她设计了一个新的发酵环境，使酸酵头在生长过程中的状态以声音数据的方式被记录，成为一种发酵的副产品，这些声音数据被设计师进一步处理成为了一首微生物交响曲，也希望通过这样的记录帮助人们更深入地了解这些微生物的生命状态。

🔍 Have a Look on the project

The word ‘fermentation’ can literally evoke a tasteful fantasy about food with rich aroma. However, I would rather like to describe fermentation as a gift from nature instead of an art of culinary art. As human beings we can only base on our experiences and knowledge, adjust to the environment, temperature or other external factors, so that we could obtain the essence at some point. The real functional „role“ in this process is still played by invisible micro creatures.

The curiosity about food fermentation led me to focus on the fermenting process of milk products, above all, of sour milk. The appearance and smell of sour milk is similar to yoghurt. However, yoghurt is an industrial product, usually fermented through a vacuum-freeze-drying isolated single culture ( in most cases are streptococcus thermopiles and lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus). Unicity of the culture ensure hygiene and safety of yoghurt, it conduces to the unity of the food taste in mass production.  However,  in this way, the yoghurt also loses the ability of concerning long-term conservation and unlimited usage as a starter culture of yoghurt producing.

In contrast, sour milk is an natural fermented milk product: one can put a little batch of ready-made sour milk (which is called starter culture in this case) into fresh milk and leaves it somewhere with room temperature, where the microbe can reproduce themselves in an appropriate environment (room temperature) and gain enough nutrition (fattiness from the milk) – Metaphorically, it could be described as a process of gradual and cultural assimilation. There are different kinds of microbe exist in different regions, of which built a diverse taste-spectrum of sour milk, many fermenters enjoy collecting and sharing the old starter cultures of them. But what are those microbes consist in sour milk in general?  No one is able to answer this question. Even if starter cultures came from same origin, after being treated differently or placed under distinct conditions, the species inside will change and grow dissimilarly. during the time and the process of changes in different environment, sour milk derived some strong but inclusive small ecosystems, tirelessly save and update the taste of sour milk.


left to right
> streptococcus thermophilus
> lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus
> Milk pasteurising equipment in 1953, for ensuring no other bacteria will be enrolled during the production of milk products


The home-used bacteria-pulver available in markets are mostly produced from labs, for making yoghurt consist of single species of culture


Vilii is a sort of sour milk from Finnland, which could be easily identified by their viscous and extensile appearance


Step by step, I also started to develop my little collection of cultures. I take care of these mini microbial „pet“ with friends in our atelier together. From this process, I gathered a strong feeling, that the happiness of enjoying fermented food doesn’t only come from the taste itself, but more from the interaction and communication with ferment-lovers


In comparison, the exchanging and delivering of starter on a small scale is still imaginable, a long-term and transregional preservation seems relatively tricky. In fact, considering the fermenting process of sour milk is actually the growing and activating process of lactobacillus (mesophilic or thermophilic bacteria), which means, the starter could be inactivated while changing the factor of either temperature or humidity. A good example would be, putting yoghurt into a refrigerator is for lowering down the heat to reduce the activity of yoghurt , therefore, to keep it alive for longer period. Nevertheless, for expanding  the „network“ of culture exchanging, ferment-lovers need to take one more step to change another factor: dehydrating the sour milk, on purpose to allow the sour milk became more suitable for delivering.

During my search for different types of sour milk, I was fascinated by the derived forms of „storage“ and „container“ for them: Some people put cottons into sour milk and dehydrate them, someone sent me crumbs of dried sour milk, one of my friend used a tissue as media and  „smuggled” some viili to Berlin… As if these mini creatures have found themselves peaceful corners in the gap of human industrial civilization for their own growth.. The most astonishing story is from the Finnish immigrants of last century, for bringing the starter culture of viili to the USA, they applied sour milk on a dried clean handkerchief, after making it dried, they would roll and put it into a bag, and transoceanically regenerate them.








The story of Finnish immigrants led my attention towards Textile as a kind of media. Mentioning the word ‘textile’, we can always recognize the original culture of a piece of textile, by identifying their unique visual style, which results in their vernacular weaving, printing and dyeing technique. In this regard, the textile is an expression medium of a culture on a civilized level.

In Germanic languages „culture“ possesses two meanings: one is the civilized rise, one is the bacterial cultivation. In the story of Finnish immigrants, a piece of textile became a literary carrier of culture. The pun leads to a playful literary meaning. I started to think about how to use textile to convey the multi-paraphrasing of „culture“.

If I consider the process of applying sour milk on textile and dehydrating them as a transformation of textile to a „medium” or „storage“, can we beautify or regularize the presenting way of sour milk (as a content) on textile (as a container)? If the textile is a carrier for sour milk babies, are they reusable after finishing their mission? I turned my attention to the white, thick sour milk – Can this semi-liquid substance also be used as a pigment for drawing a portrait of the microorganisms in sour milk?





I chose three kinds of sour milk from different cultures: matsoni from Georgia, viili from Finland, filmjölk from Sweden. The fabric/pattern from each culture has its own striking personality: Geometric pattern of Georgian carpet, Finnish lattice fabric, Swedish Kubrits pattern…I extracted the most representative visual elements in each culture and designed three different flat patterns for each sour milk. The textile as a container has been divided into equal parts with the unit of 10cm *10cm. The negative patterns and the name of related sour milk were screen printed on textile with food colouring, and then the corresponding sour milk was applied on each square to cover the positive pattern. After drying, every little unit square can be cut off and used for fermenting a small bottle of sour milk starter.





The evolution of patterns design for sour milk from three cultures















The processing method of my fabric allows people to cut them off as small squares easily,  The lightness of material allows it to be inserted into any corner around. In this sense, the culture not only has the possibility of infinite extension along the longitudinal axis of time but also gets to wander around in different spatial extents whenever people walks by. I cut down pieces of my culture and shared with friends via post or visiting. Thus the micro bacteria rely on a light cloth completed their journey as a wanderer. As the natural fermentation is still full of uncertainties, from the feedbacks of friends,I learned that not every container gets a perfect result. But as a friend said: „it was fun“, I think the „ fun“ is the most substantial reason and most joyful thing, to cultivate and exchange culture, to enjoy fermented food in our daily life.

🔍 Have a Look on the project

Wanderer | Masterarbeit 2018

Betreuer/in:

Axel Kufus
Johanna Schmeer

Special Thanks to

Edible Alchemy
Julia Kunz
Sandor Ellix Katz  
Zining LIU
Fang HU
Dong LIU
Kailin LU

Videos feedback provided by

Filippo Maria MIRASOLE
Samuel VON DÜFFEL
Adrian BACHMANN
Yue LIU
Esmée WILLEMSEN
Juan GAEZE

Chapter 1 - Crafts of Tofu
Beginning with research about traditional Chinese ingredients (soy products) and digging out the various crafts and flavours behind them, we had a chance to look at the way the production of one ingredient can vary at different scales (mass production/middle manufacture/small hand-crafting atelier/home-made), but the different way of producting soy products can also be generalized to one linear process.



From Soaking (❶) to Blending (❷) the soybeans, then you get a mixture of soybeans which should be filtered till the soymilk left (❸). After the soymilk getting boiled (❹) and being cooled down to 80 °C (❺) add coagulator in it (❺). Wait until the protein inside getting coagulated and put it into a model, press until been formed (❻) -- Then you get your tofu.






In the final installation of TOFU DRINK we readjusted the making process:




Chapter 2 - Crafts of TOFU DRINK
Combining woods, ceramics, glass, metal together, the production process of tofu drinkincludes cooperation with hand craft master in different fields.

Glass - Shanghai
We worked in coperate with a glass atelier in Shanghai to modify our glas parts.

Metal - Milan

The Breath of MINI LIVING - 米兰设计周体验食物艺术

24.04.2017 | 悦&溪婧

MINI LIVING 是意大利造车品牌MINI旗下的一个持续进行的实验设计项目，他们为城市生活提出新理念，创造新的生活空间。在2017的米兰设计周中他们与SO-LI建筑工作室合作，打造了这个名为”Breathe”的体验空间，旨在能够在有限的空间与资源的前提下建立一种可持续的生活方式，同时在与之相伴的展览空间中介绍了与现代生活紧密相关不同领域的前沿设计作品与设计师。



在展览中 Laila Gohar 和 Pepi de Boissieu 的作品吸引了我们的注意。Laila Gohar是位驻足纽约的设计师，将食物作为艺术媒介和传播工具，通过创造欢乐、多感官的试用活动来探索人类互动的本质；Pepi de Boissieu在巴塞罗那经营一间创意工作室，作品主要聚焦于食物。两位设计师携手创造了一个饮食体验空间“The Art of Good Food”，通过一个“有意识的”的Bar向有食趣并愿意为此支付5€的食客们展示了一份充满诗意且营养十足的菜单，借此希望将人们与生活之基本所需——土壤、阳光、氧气与水再次相连。展示空间依照四个生活基本元素分区，同时向人们展示人类是如何将它们借助饮食转换为能量。








突然邂逅这样一件作品，不知是该感叹确实在欧美、我们之前视野之外的世界各地活跃着各种各样的食物设计师，还是该赞美自己好运气，毕竟在mini living和so-li建筑的合作空间外排队近一个小时的疲惫后，确实只想悠闲坐坐吃吃，顺便听听故事了。


展区内四个不同主题被布置环绕在空间四周，当我们在前台点单，每人被分配到一个小碗与一只汤匙后，便开始了绕场一步一步的流程体验。
















首先来到“地味”与“气味”单元。展柜上几团菌类丛生的泥土团，极力营造着刚从大自然中挖来的“野”态，然而似乎却是在场馆展厅之内被培育出来的实验物种。讲解员兼服务生为我们拔下几丛，又淘起一把野米撒上，再从密密麻麻的芽菜中剪下一二，浇在着原生态满满的一晚“地味沙拉”上，便算是前菜了。


习惯了奶酪与红酒的沉重口味，清新菜味地到来别致地点缀了舌尖，我们懵懂点头：确实是十分“地味”了。









收拾收拾，刮刮碗底，来到下一个“水味”单元。在这个单元中食物以其中含水量的多寡依次排列——从含水量为0%的色拉油，到88%的水果。讲解员兼服务生煞有介事架势撑足操作着餐具，一道道为我们盛进碗内。从大自然中直接摘取的食物当然不错，配上腌制后的小鱼确实是美味小食，让人惋惜实验品不能让人大快朵集。

















最后一个章节是“阳光”单元，将其命名为“sun leather”确实形象——晒至而成的果皮疏疏落落亮在几根活动的长杆上，给人仿佛刚从室外艳阳中架回来的既视感。讲解员兼服务员手持剪刀，随着大家的饕餮目光手起刀落剪下不同口味的片片“皮革”。“皮革”带胶状口感，让人回想起小时候常吃的软软的山楂卷，但口味稍淡且更加丰富。色彩鲜艳的果皮旁边，架子上铺着些许晒干的果皮，经讲解员解释后才知道那些干果皮不可食用，但是却在向人们展示着果皮完整的生命轨迹。













Xijing 溪婧：

在Laila Gohar的个人网页中，有一段话吸引了我——
Laila Gohar designs unique eating experiences that take place in non-traditional settings all over the world
当不同的饮食文化、饮食习惯已经横亘在人们之间，成为一种阻碍交流的鸿沟的时候，也许设计师可以反而从另一个视点出发，完全放弃传统的饮食方式创造一种全新的饮食状态，在这种全新的状态中，所有人都因一无所知而彼此平等，由此反而营造出一个刺激性的空间，鼓动着人们去探求、去交流、去玩耍……去创造新的回忆。



Yue 悦：
在mini living的饮食体验让我有幸获得了一次回归乡野的机遇，当生活方式回归纯朴，饮食这一部分理所应当地被放大、被解构到土壤与阳光、氧气与水的层面。体验“地味沙拉”的一瞬间，食不知味的我恍然：忙碌的城市生活让我们太久没有放下沉重的负担，用每一个感官去体验所食之物，我们匆匆拿起碗筷，匆匆完成补充能量的日常环节，可能太久没有用心细看眼下的食物。也许优质食物的艺术并不完全在于食物本身，也归因于我们无论作为生产者异或是消费者对待食物的方式，能否让食物拥有一个完整而美好的生命轨迹。