Ryerson Food Culture

Wayne's Notes:

You guys have done some good research here, thanks.

Three concerns:

You need to start getting interviews and interview material in the can.

You need to establish a clear through line and work together as a team as you create content.

You need to make sure your subjects can contextualize what they do in terms of makerculture. And, you need to keep the overarching MakerCulture project in mind as you interview folks so that you explain how this fits into that culture and what your folks contribute to or learn from that culture. Good start guys. Thanks. Will email you your mark

Wayne

 

Elevator Pitch

 

This pitch needs to be stronger gang.

Suggestion:

"Your mother told you not to play with your food - here's what happens when you ignore that advice."

 

Group, how about this as a new elevator pitch?

 

 

You’ve finished making dinner, and you have a pile of stems, seeds and rhinds left on your cutting board- just waiting for the onslaught of fruitflies to use it as their newest breeding ground. Whether you believe it or not, there are people who use these food scraps, and whole food for other, less appetizing applications like make-up, art and science.

These people are food hackers, and they continued playing with their food long after their mothers told them to stop.

How about that old $650 espresso machine you could never properly use, and is now left collecting dust on your counter? Food hackers and makers across the board have found ways to use and modify this dusty investment, so you too, can pull your shots like your favourite café with an espresso machine worth more than your car. -Adam

 

 

 

 

 

Most Canadians do not know a lot about their food. 

People who eat their food, may not know, there are people who find their own use of this food. Some chefs employ complex chemistry to modernize cooking, hackers and chefs alike are sharing recipes in an open-source environment, people at home are modifying their own kitchen tools to make cooking more efficient and there are even people using food as cosmetic creams to slather on their face.

 Unlike the average consumer, the makerculture movement does understand their food. Instead of relying on stores, the makerculture movement shows us the value of growing, creating, preparing and eating their own food, plus finding other uses for it.

 

 

Research to Date 

 Arti

• Trying to find the history of artists who use food for their work, one particular name I found common among articles was Dieter Roth. He was an artist who in 1965 at the Rhode Island School of Design who experimented with chocolate, butter and chocolate. He would create sculptures out of butter and chocolate and used sausage slices to embedd between pieces of glass. For Roth, his art work was focused on the peocess of decay and mold, to make sure his work was also evolving.

Consider milk chocolate Jesus http://gothamist.com/2007/03/30/easter_bunny_me.php

 

• Another important feature of research has to do with the food art scene in different cities. In New York, the Umami Festival is held every year to highlight the importance of meshing both food and art. Within this festival it is also important to know that they are aimed at all ages of people, helping everyone express themselves with food or methods of food. http://www.umamifestival.com/
• Through other research I have also found out some art schools in Toronto including the Art Works Art School are exploring the ideas of makerculture by teaching it to others, for example an art class that uses dried beans.  

 

Good, key here is to find folks who can contexualize their work within makerculture and self-identify. 

 

Adam

• As the open-source movement grows online, foodies and chefs alike have hopped on board and created communities to share recipes free-of-charge to one another in the name of creativity and gourmet cooking. This marriage of food and the internet is no coincidence. In an article about recent recipe-sharinng communities, tech journalist Sean Kerner said the following: 
• "What really is a recipe cookbook? Essentially it’s a collection of source code (ingredients) compiled together (cooking directions) into a robust application suite (cookbook). Cookbooks have been around since the dawn of time and have always grown by virtue of recipes that are often times shared among friends or passed down by families and communities. It’s entirely appropriate in this nascent millennium that recipes continue to be shared electronically, in a truly open source way." 
• Excellent
•  
• Something else I have been working on is kitchen hacking modification. Basically, there is a very vibrant community of people taking apart their kitchen appliances, and modifying them to make them better. In my preliminary research, this has proven to be especially true in the coffee-drinking community. A quick example, on the www.coffeegeek.com forums, enthusiasts and afficionados post problems with their machines, and find others with the same problems and same machines who have modified their machines to ensure their coffee is as pure as can be.

Good stuff Adam, key here is, as with Arti, folks who contextualize what they're doing like Kerner. Also, big key contrast between carefully guarded and protected recipes and the inversion of that to open sourcing what used to be private.

 

Vincent

• Organic gardening and consuming locally grown food is nothing new. Beginning in the 1960s, a number of hippies and Vietnam War veterans desired a simpler life and spearheaded a "back to the land" movement. Unfortunately, the movement was a large-scale failure. Many people did not understand the complexities associated with farming. Very few people remained on their land for more than a year.
• After the back to the land movement failed, a number of successful ones began writing "How-to" books on living off the land. One of the most popular ones was by British writer John Seymour, entitled The Concise Guide to Self-Sufficiency. The book details everything from making your own eletricity to growing your own food, and creating farm plots for rural citizens. The book offers no illusions, and details the difficulty associated with the lifestyle. Recent additions to the book offer tips for people in urban environments. Their are also a number of manuals online teaching the same thing.
• The 100-mile diet and organic gardening saw a huge resurgence in the early 2000s with the recent return of environmentalism into the mainstream.
• It was actually sparked by The Tyee in Canada.
•  
• The current economic crisis also contributed to the self-sufficienct lifestyle associated with food makerculture and the "survivalist" mode of thinking. Prior to the 2000s, survivalist groups were fringe groups. They were mainly composed of gun rights activists who were angry at the Clinton administration's gun control laws in the 1990s. Today, most survivalists, people who embrace self-sufficiency and a true definition of "makerculture," practice stocking up on bulk food and making their own supplies and food. Many have also ditched the alarmist view that was held in the 1990s, replacing it with a desire to live a simpler, cheaper, and more satisfying lifestyle.
• There are a number of self-sufficient organic gardens and survivalist groups in the GTA. One such group is Food Cycles. They are the first commecial organic farm in Toronto, located near Downsview Park. Their is also the Toronto Survivalist Group, who have ditched the alarmism and teach living off one's surrounding environment. The most popular topics addressed involve making your own shelter and growing your own food.

Good background. Need to process it in the context of makeculture in general. 

Sonya

• I’m looking for individuals who have created their own jewellery, facial products, or even clothing out of every day food. In other words, I want to focus on the “food for beauty” aspect within this group.
• After some research, I’ve found there are people who have created jewellery out of fruit, dresses out of bacon, and a whole list of foods are being used for facial/skin products. For example, honey, oatmeal, avocado, sugar and eggs are just some of the foods used to moisturize skin. Even alcohol is being used as shampoo!
• Mainly, I’ve been looking for people who are creating their own beauty products out of food, and I am following a couple of them on twitter so far. By doing so, I’ll constantly be updated about the new products they are “inventing” because they are eager to share.
• So far, I’ve found many blogs by people who have created their own products, and I’ve been exploring videos of people creating (or showing others) how to make their own facial products. These are people I want to contact. (I've sent emails to some already, and still waiting for responses).
• In the mean time, I'm looking for people close by (in Toronto) who would fit into this category of makerculture in food; someone who takes food and uses it as a beauty product.

Key here is finding folks who put what they do in the context of maker culture. This is vital for this section to work.

 

Christian

• I'm currently looking for people who have decided that the LCBO and Beer Store shouldn't hold a monopoly over selling alcohol. I will call these people "alcohol hackers," distilling their own alcohol either in makeshift stills or elaborate industrial ones...at home!
• I've started to learn about the process of distilling alcohol at home. There is some science behind it, but overall it is fairly simple. The hardest part is actually finding the material to create your own still, which I've found can be done for as little as $15. 
• I've found the name of many interview subjects I would like to speak with. Unfortunately, actually speaking with them will be my hardest task. People who participate in distilling their own alcohol at home realize it's illegal and are usually reluctant to give any sort of significant information, let alone their names. As it stands right now, my story will have nothing but anonymous sources. 
• As you know, anonymous is the very last resort. Try everything you can to get even a first time on the record. This will give your piece so much more credibility. Meet with folks face-to-face when possible. This will help build trust.
•  
• Some cool facts I've learned: New Zealand is the only country where distillation of alcohol at home is legal. Alcohol content can be in excess of 100% when distilling at home. Flavouring the alcohol is by far the most difficult part of the process, and often the final product tastes awful. 
• Okay, so get an interview on the record with a name from someone in NZ. Good.

 

 

Assumptions

 

We will likely run into trouble getting people to speak with us, since many "food makers" we have encountered have little internet presence.

 

• Many of the food maker projects seem to be run individually on a fairly small budget. However, there are larger restaurants that practice molecular gastronomy, and the internet has allowed people to share recipes. Despite the fact that they are able to share recipes, there are still many technological barriers for small home enthusiasts to part-take in the fun.

 

• In regards to the food artists, we assume that they did not start off using food as an ingredient but rather used it later in their career. Also, the scene in Toronto of food artist is not as large as one say in New York for example. And there are probably not many artists who only use food, they must use other ingredients as well.

 

• For the 100 mile diet and organic farming topic, we assume most of the people interviewed will try to get as much of their food locally as possible. These people will put a lot of time and effort into their gardens, and hopefully be very knowledgeable and passionate. 

 

• With the ‘food for beauty’ topic, it’s assumed that the people using food as facial products must have learned this from somewhere else, and that it really does work. I’m interested in learning where or how people thought up the idea to smooth egg whites onto their faces.

  Also, with the food for jewellery or clothing, it’s assumed that these products do not last a long time, since they are made with real food which will begin to rot. It’ll be interesting to learn how (or even if) these products can be persevered.

  Food for beauty (jewellery, for example) cannot last a long time, so one can also assume that although this fits into the beauty topic, it could also be a creative/art matter, which links with Arti’s topic of food in art. Maybe the producers of clothing or jewellery made out of food are trying to make a statement?

  As with using food for facials, another issue or assumption may be that people cannot afford to buy expensive creams, so turning to natural resources may have been their only choice, for example, people make their own soaps out of fats from animals

 

 

Possible Interview Subjects 

Vincent

• Barbora Grochalova: Heavily involved in the Green Party of Ontario and environmental issues. She is knowledgeable and knows a lot of people who are involved with organic gardening and sustainability projects.
•  Not Far from the Tree: Volunteers who collect locally grown produce and give a portion to food banks
•  Maloca Community Garden@York: Organic garden run by students at York University
•  Food Cycles: Toronto's first commercial organic garden, located near Downsview Park

 

Arti

•  Mike Goodge: artist/art instructor (creates African inspired masks with dried beans)
•  Jess Dobkin: performance artists (used breast milk for her art once)
•  Liya Hyun-Joo Choi: emerging performance artist (used fortune cookies to represent sexual and racial streotyping)  
•  Don S.R Kumarasinghe: fruit carver
•  Yael Raviv: Festival Chair for the Umami Festival 

 

Adam

• Claudio Aprile- owner/ executive chef- Colborne Lame restaurant in Toronto (sent email, soon to follow up with phone call).
• Sean Kerner- tech journalist, who writes for linux and has specifically written about open-source recipe sharing
• The Unicorn Precinct XIII- a ''bed and breakfast'' in San Francisco that is "home to family of anarchist artist musician spiritualist freak hacker chefs."- sounds very promising, but has been so far quite difficult to contact.
• Marc Powell- notorious hacker chef who trained with the original chefs practicing molecular gastronomy in England.

 

Sonya

• The creator of "the dried fruit project", Cathy Wu would be ideal for this story. She lives in the U.S., but I'm sure I could contact her. I've already sent her an email outlining what the project is about and why I want to speak to her.
• Faith Lawless, who's been in the make up industry for 10 years, writes tips on how to use things out of your own kitchen as make up. Since she's familiar with beauty and make up, her expert advice and tips would be helpful.
• Somebody from TipNut.com, which is an interesting web site which offers tips on how to make your own products out of foods, etc. I've already sent an email.
• Maybe contacting someone from the "Natural Beauty" organization in Toronto (Natural Beauty Society)

 

Christian

• Duncan Strathearn - high school friend of mine who has been distilling his own "moonshine" in his basement since grade 10 with an alcohol content of 93%. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to convince him to use his real name in the article. 
• Stephanie Kittell - The most organic/slow food/healthy eating advocate I've ever met. So, naturally, she's also into distilling her own alcohol. I found out that not only does she enjoy it for personal consumption, she has also started selling it and it making a decent amount of money on the side doing so. 
• A website called homedistiller.org has been set up as a wiki and guide for anyone looking for information on the topic. I'm currently trying to find a contact from this website who I can speak to but with no success as of yet. 

 

 

The Focus, Scope and Angle of the Piece

 

The food makerculture is a movement that embraces self-sufficiency as much as possible. We, as a group, will try to figure out why people have decided to add food to this do-it-yourself culture and if they believe this is the future of how we consume food.  

 

Our food feature has a fairly wide scope, and will be dealing with nearly every feasible application for food. We will be covering the slow food movement, molecular gastronomy, and gardening, food as art, food hacking / kitchen modification and open source recipe sharing.

 

Media Choices

 

Podcast

Including our five seperate feature stories that deal with both consuming and not consuming food, our group will feature a 20-minute podcast.

This podcast will highlight:

 

• The history of food and makerculture. We will like to talk about our elevator pitch and some important people.
• We will have snippets of different interviewees, and why they chose food as part of makerculture.
• We have decided that will we will ask similar questions and have a host introducing the topics.
• We also want to have background sound within the interview clips, so it will highlight our episode.
• We will end with a conclusion on what we think the future of food makerculture is, and where our topics might end up.

 

For video, facts, and photos we will highlight:

 

Video:

• Each person will create a video. The video will be three to five minutes long. The video will centre around the main focus on our story, and will touch on any interesting facts or things they have to say that we could not fit into our written story. 
• make sure you agree as a team on the video content, voice, focus etc.

 

Photos:

• Each of us will have our own individual photos on our articles.
• As a group, we will create a slideshow that focuses on our subjects interacting with their makerculture environment.

 

Facts:

• Our stories will have a side bar that has interesting facts relating to our stories that we could not fit in to our stories. 

 

Next Steps

 

The next few steps involve more research and more interviews. Our group will begin selecting our interviewing, filming and recording dates and each member will specifically choose who they will interview. As a group, we will continue to look into the common elements between our interviewees and use this information to create our podcast introduction. We will also begin collecting audio, photos and videos that we be using collectively as a group. At this point, each member is focused on their own angle and story but at the same time, we wish to keep each other informed with the progress of our work so we can continue to put together our episode.