A few months ago I participated in an Iconathon with the Noun Project, Mother Jones, and GRACE Communications Foundation to come up with icons that represent various sustainable food and farming concepts. The icons are now live and a bunch of them are ones that alextodaro and I designed along with our teammates Tom Philpott (who writes about his experience here) and Emily Cozart of Mother Jones. Pretty cool :)
Does the eating-pace of your guests vary dramatically, enough to cause tension at the table? Is someone at your dinner party running at the mouth with no end in sight? Looking for a way to balance the conversation on the first date? Wish you could just dump an entire bowl of soup in your dining-mates lap? Look no further! The tilt-table is here!
Tilt Table Test 1 from Alex Todaro on Vimeo.
I've had this object in my mind for quite some time, and although exaggerated, I think it does a nice job of quickly displaying the things I've been thinking about. (Using the motivations and constraints of dining, and focusing the behaviors around that experience through the objects and set-up.)
A lot of my experiments have a strong 'game-like' quality to them and this object really zeros in on that in a very primal way. You are forced to eat in sync with someone otherwise you'll have a big ol' bowl of soup in your lap. You "Win" by not getting soup in your lap. With my initial tests with it today I saw quickly how someone could game this system (no pun intended) and rather than the table encouraging polite, balanced conversation, it instead makes people a bit anxious and actually eat faster than what's probably normal. The success of the object is that it makes you hyper aware of what the other person is doing, and as a bonus eaters can now be competitive.
This object is a prop and should be looked at through that lens. It's purpose is to quickly convey an idea and get people thinking about a familiar space in a different way, it's helped me to clarify some of my thinking in that regard, and generally it just makes me smile a lot, which is a precious resource during the last moments of thesis.
Big thanks to Frank and Tyler for sitting down with me!
After the last dinner I hosted I received a range of feedback from my peers. On one end, the dinner had merit for the sake of identifying different arrangements that would evoke new behaviors between guests. On the other end, there was questions around the variability of my experiment. While I explained a lot in the last blog post, there was still the matter of my own intent, which was unclear when I presented to my class. With this type of experiment there’s a lot being thrown at the wall and in many cases it’s difficult to discern which part of the decisions made by me were the one’s effecting the decisions of the guests. For this reason I was encouraged to host the dinner again. The purpose being to validate insights gathered form the first time, and recognizing patterns between the two experiences.
The Non-Traditionalist Dinner Part Deux was hosted on March 28th. It was held in the same place at The School of Visual Arts and lasted for roughly 2 hours. Below is an account of what happened with comparisons to the first experiment.
The parameters of the dinner this time were mostly the same. The original intent was to have four strangers but in this case two of the guests were cousins. Upon entering, each guest was given a syringe filled with wine. This time two syringes had fine pointed tips, while two had no tips. The guests were brought to the table for introductions and appetizers and once they sat down the meal began.
The introduction:
Gabrielle, Alyssa, & Alex stand around the table in the corner of the loft-style floor, picking at tomatoes, mozzarella and bread while they wait for Justin to arrive. A playlist of Miles Davis croons in the background while a warm spring breeze rolls in, the mood is light-hearted and casual.
After a brief confusion with security downstairs, Justin arrives. With everyone present the guests introduce themselves to one another and take a few moments to hear Justin’s story of getting stuck on the first floor with security. A couple of minutes pass as they share thoughts on security at schools, and to his embarrassment, mistake Justin for a grad student.
Justin suggests finally “Shall we sit?” and everyone takes their seat. As they do so, having already drank the contents of his syringe, Justin leans over to the box filled with wine to help himself to a refill.
“Oh, I didn’t even think about that.” Says Alyssa.
This is the first instance of suggestions from one guest to another, which then begins a series of experimentations with the syringes.
The syringe acts as the first catalyst of conversation amongst the guests. After Justin’s initial reach into the box of wine, the goal becomes finding a way to drink the wine more efficiently. Gabrielle mentions how she feels screwed because her syringe doesn’t have a tip, while Justin tries to completely abandon the plunger method, removing the end of his syringe and exploring ways to scoop wine from the box.
“This is going to be an interesting night guys.” Says Gabrielle.
Justin replies,
“Not if we have to drink the wine this slowly.”
Justin then plunges some more wine from the box, removes the end cap and takes back the contents of the syringe like a shot. He smiles proudly and remarks.
“I just had to know I could beat the system.”
Utensil Introduction
After the first round of introductions and getting settled I brought out the utensils for the guests. For this dinner I kept all the utensils exactly the same and they were distributed to the same part of the table.
Because of the rapport between Gabrielle and Alyssa there was an air of playful antagonism present at the table. For example, as Alyssa brings the squirt gun out of her bag, Gabrielle looks at her and says, “Oh no. it was a terrible idea to give you the water gun.”. Later in the process, Alyssa commented on Gabrielle’s set of tools and tells her, “You actually got the worst eating tools.”. Although playful, these types of comments created a value judgement for each set of tools, creating a competitive environment for the best use of the tools.
Not unlike the first dinner, the guests began presenting each tool in their bag and offering it up for reflection amongst the group. The difference being that in this case most of the conversation remained in the category of value judgments versus potential uses.
This particular group quickly jumped into building amongst themselves without validation from the others, while the conversation touched on framing the inherent ridiculousness of the situation. Meanwhile in the background, Alex stayed mostly quiet as she tried variations of popsicle sticks with her rubber bands. When asked later she commented on how her first instinct was to build “The universal tool.” One that could be valuable in many instances since she wasn’t aware of what was being served.
Once things had settled down a bit Justin realized that Alex was the only person without a jar filled with model magic. At this point the rest of the group had repurposed their jar for a drinking glass. Justin took it upon himself to craft Alex a cup out of his model magic. This prompts Gabrielle and Alyssa to begin sculpting with the clay and they independently created spoon-like tools for themselves.
The Salad
Earlier in the night a question was raised by Alex asking if the tools represented containers as well as utensils. Since nobody knew, the question didn’t go much further. Once the salad was served it became a free for all rally to find a plate. Justin quickly laid his paper bag down, similar to Francesca from the the first meal. Also similar to the first meal, nobody followed suit and decided to make their own version of a plate.
It’s at this point in the meal when Gabrielle starts to unfold her napkin, which prompts everybody else to address it. Until then all napkins had been sitting on the table. Prompted by the size of the napkins there are some jokes made about how they are “bib-like” and Gabrielle takes a moment to try it around her neck like Anna did during the first meal.
Alex mimics this action but her leather overalls are too slick and her napkin drops to the floor. Justin resolves to having his napkin in his lap but is skeptical of it’s size saying, “I’m scared this is so big.”. Alyssa winds up keeping her napkin folded in front of her for the entirety of the meal, using it as place to wipe her fingers.
The model magic this dinner had much more of a narrative around it. There’s was healthy skepticism but in spite of that the guests still decided to use it to eat. Alex already using it as a glass, Gabrielle decides to mold it into a bowl to hold her salad. “I assume this is safe to put food on right?” She says. Justin replies, “Yeah, it’s non toxic. It’s meant for children so they put everything in their mouth.”. He completes this by grabbing a large handful of salad and funneling it into is titled-back mouth.
To support the sagging edges of her bowl, Gabrielle reinforces it by placing the wooden cubes around its perimeter.
Alyssa follows this model and also lays our her clay to serve as a plate, however in the meantime she’s fashioned a spoon-like tool from the tubing and a binder clip. This is her “first prototype” of a utensil, as well as the first example of a combo-item utensil used in either of the dinners. It’s important to point this tool out because there is a strong mental modeling shift that happens when you begin to see each of the objects as potentials to be paired with others. It offers the guest a new type of control that’s based in the idea of gestalt. If the tools they have aren’t meeting their needs, they can adapt more quickly to satisfy them. It’s only after Alyssa makes this that we start to see further combinations of objects for custom purposes.
It’s also important to note that from the beginning Alex had been trying to combine a rubber band and the popsicle sticks to make a tool but had no success. It’s possible this experimentation inspired Alyssa to combine her objects too.
Around this time Alex who has otherwise been quiet, slams her popsicle sticks down and proclaims. “Dammit! why is this so hard?”. She gives up on building a tool and puts the rubber gloves on instead. These become her means for eating and plating. Gabrielle laughs saying, “That’s what I would have done, the popsicle sticks were just to fuck with you.”. Alex smiles, replying, “And they did.”
Midway through the salad, once everyone found some sort of methodology for eating, Justin realizes something about other objects on the table.
He took it upon himself to create a new tool and offer it up to the group. Now, like the first dinner, all the guests are eating with appropriated chopsticks.
Working together to drink
There was a charming-stubbornness to this group. I mentioned the competitive edge earlier, it’s not that guests were being rude to one another, it’s just that they were all strong personalities who were taking the challenge seriously. There were a few key moments however when those walls broke down and the collaboration of the group led to incredible developments for the experience. For whatever reason a lot of these developments had to do with drinking wine, which suggests to me that to identify a universal goal is key to the success of collaboration.
At one point Alyssa starts reaching over the table to access the box of water. Justin laughs and tells her “You can just pick it up and drink out of it.”. Alyssa holds up her plastic tubes and replies, “I’m good, I’ll just get lower than the table and syphon some out.”. This playful banter winds up sparking an idea and Gabrielle excitedly encourages Alyssa to use the tools for drinking. She grabs the tube from Alyssa and holds one end in the water box while Alyssa has the opposite end with her in her seat. This is not unlike the use of the tube from the first meal.
This time however, the group added to the idea so that they could all reap the benefits of this development. Justin says, “Wait, Hold on! I have an idea.”. he grabs a binder clip, reaches across the table and attaches the tube to the edge of the box so that one end is permanently inside. This replace the job of someone holding it while another is drinking. “It’s like a hookah!”. Solving the problem for one box of liquid, Alyssa holds up her other tube and says, “I have another one.” Alex looks at everyone with a smile and says, “Let’s hook that up to the wine.”. Justin claps his hands together and is more excited than he has been for the entirety of the meal. The team has collectively found a way to make their experience better.
Now that the idea of combining objects to make a more customized experience has been proven, the guests begin to take a closer look at their needs and what they might build to satisfy them. Alyssa noticed that her model magic plate was breaking down on contact with the dressing from the salad. To counter this she begins taking pieces of bread to pad her plate. During this Gabrielle ask’s what she is doing. Alyssa says, “I’m going to improve my plate.”
This sparks a discussion around hygiene and it’s surfaced that Alex and Gabrielle are both sensitive to the lack thereof at this dinner. Specifically they have begun not drinking from the tubing in the wine. Justin realizes this and begins to try and solve the issue. He looks around, grabs his eye dropper and uses the end as a mouth-piece for Gabrielle.
“See, it’s now just like a hookah. You even have your own mouth piece.” Justin says as Gabrielle tries it out.
Alex realizes Gabrielle is using her eye dropper that she gave to Justin earlier and says, “Shoot, I gave you that. Where’s mine now?”
She then repurposes her syringe and begins experimenting with it as a mouthpiece.
Realizing the difficulty of this, Alyssa breaks the end of her eye dropper and offers it to Alex to use. It works like a charm and everyone begins to clap. Alex enthusiastically looks up and says, “All together. I like this island, I’m ok with it. You guys are really looking out for us.”
Between the combining of objects for more efficiency, the sympathy amongst guests needs, and the experimentation with the tools, the end of this course paved the way for a benevolent ethos that carried throughout the rest of the meal. When I interviewed Alex afterwards she spoke a lot about appreciating the need to ask for help, saying that in an environment where everything is foreign and everyone has different capabilities it allowed her to reach out and learn about personal commonalities between her and the other guests. At this point in the meal there had been little small talk or even personal anecdotes, rather, the guests were learning about one another through the lens of problem solving, adaptability and comfort levels.
Main Course
This course was changed from the original dinner. This time Gaia Orain made an incredible asparagus and spinach frittata with a goat cheese and dill creme fraiche. The idea was to have something that seemed pretty innocuous and then when cut into proved to be more difficult and messy. Having seen Alyssa’s plate made of model magic with a barrier on top of it, Alex decided to follow. She remolded the clay cup Justin made for her into a base and then laid the popsicle sticks uniformly on top of it. In the interview she talked about how this was an exciting moment because it was a triage of support to create one item, the material from Justin, the idea from Alyssa, and the action from Alex.
Justin begins the course by using the acrylic rectangle provided in his tools to cut the frittata. he takes it upon himself to serve to everyone else. Although the frittata was messy it didn’t require much re-negotiating of the use of tools. once each guest had a piece they could easily hold it with their hands to eat. Alex had the most difficult time with this but only because she was using the gloves. As she ate they increasingly became more covered in the fraiche, until it got to a point that she couldn’t handle the messiness of them. Gabrielle even mentions at one point that if Alex licks her fingers with the gloves on she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Both of them, however, in spite of the disarray of the table are still committed to holding it together.
When Alex is at the height of frustration she voices to the group, “I really need to rinse off, does anybody really need that water cause I want to use it.” Gabrielle recognizes the struggle and says she wouldn’t mind sacrificing the water for Alex. Talking out loud Alex says, “Oh the uncleanliness of the situation! uhhh, I will say I am appreciative to have these gloves but this creme fraiche is ruining my life.”. Once she’s had enough she removes her gloves and stows them away back in the paper bag.
The Gun
Although the gun had been joked about earlier in the dinner, it remained mostly dormant for a long time. Alyssa here and there would shoot some wine in her mouth but it wasn’t until Justin reached for it that the gun became a focus. “Excuse me? Are you cutting me off?” Says Alyssa. “It’s just way more efficient.” responds Justin. He then raises the gun and points it at Alyssa. in good spirits she begins to laugh, holds her bag underneath her mouth and this begins the round of everyone taking a turn.
After this the group is really comfortable with one another and begins to poke fun at the whole situation. Alex jokes about seeing how the rubber band could help her and then just puts in on her wrist laughing while saying, “Look! I’m eating with a rubber band.”
Justin then starts taking all the useless objects off the table and tries to throw them out the window.
The Dessert
For the dessert all formalities were pretty much out the window. The group had created enough of a comfortable rapport that all negotiations of tools and personal space were established. Upon seeing the dessert Alex realizes she has no tools left. She ask, “Is there anyway I can rinse my gloves off?” to which Gabrielle responds, “If you put those gloves in there, you better be the last one.”. Alex wasn’t the only one who had used all of her tools, the rest of the group also had to find a different means to dig in while not spoiling the food with used utensils. Alyssa uses the lid to her jar, and Gabrielle uses one of the hot pink acrylic disks to scoop some of the dessert into her glass jar. Alex then prompts Justin if he’s going to use his toothbrush for this one, he unpacks it, reaches into the dessert and begins “brushing his teeth” with the mousse. He smiles and jokingly says, “The brushes really grab it.”
Alex is being tempted by all of this and begins dismantling her popsicle stick tray looking for a clean one to get some dessert. Alyssa tells her not to use them, and then Justin and Gabrielle support by handing Alex their jar lids. Alex laughs again and says, “See, I would have been dead on this island if it wasn’t for you two.”
Reflection:
In my last post I wrote
“In an empirical sense design’s success is measured by it’s ability to be repeatable. If I were to replicate this dinner I’m afraid that the context might skew that opportunity. Different guests, different backgrounds, it’s very possible that other guests might not shoot each other in the face with a squirt gun.”
The purpose of this meal then was to see what was actually repeatable from the first experience, and to my surprise there was a lot of overlap between use of tools, methods for solving problems, specific events, and overall levels of familiarity amongst the participants. Because this was a repeat of the first experiment the main goal was just that.
What was interesting then was to see where this meal deviated. The first thing I noticed was that in this meal the use of tools didn’t start out as being the same and then evolving over time. It was pretty consistent throughout the whole thing that each guest had there own way of doing things. In that same regard the personality traits of the guests were the reason for that differentiation. Justin for example was alpha, he didn’t ask permission he just went ahead and did things but also wasn’t obtuse when others needed help. Alyssa also was alpha and decided she was just going to continue to make things until she found what she needed.
Gabrielle and Alex however were different in having very specific personal reservations about cleanliness and order. Had they not been there to empathize with one another it would have been interesting to see how they would have handled the situation. They also helped one another voice their concerns which could then be addressed by the group at large. In the first meal there wasn’t any vocalized discomfort with the experience therefore there wasn’t any tension to be solved other than basic negotiations of utility. Having people who were uncomfortable at the meal was really nice because it generated a broader range of emotions to be explored. This begins to point towards bigger ambitions of mine to frame these settings to generate experiences beyond “playfulness” and getting to the heart of things like trust and vulnerability.
Alex in her interview and during the dinner expressed multiple times that this was pushing her far outside of her comfort zone and she was thankful for it because it was giving her a new perspective and in some cases was allowing her to appreciate new people and their ability to help her. I like this idea because while the dinner is designed to be challenging there’s no set range for how hard it’s going to be or if anybody is going to do anything about it. The variability is in the choices that the participants make and in this case they chose to help, they chose to keep one another supported throughout the meal and it was done thorough immediate action.
It’s interesting that in both of these meals the thing to rise to the top was the nature of human relationships, and the simplicity of breaking down habits to subvert our comfort zones and fall-backs. Eating and ritual are always right in front of our noses but by breaking order we’re creating opportunity for new possibilities.
The last idea I want to talk about is designed emergent environments. My sister and I are obsessed with ‘escape the room’ games. If you haven’t played, basically they are games where you have to find tools in a room, pair them with other tools, solve puzzles and make it out of the room. It’s kind of like Myst meets jail break. The system behind these games is very linear, you can only get to the end if you complete steps A-Z in order, even if it feels like you’ve gone back and forth one hundred times trying to figure out what the next step actually is. What’s interesting about these games though is that they are designed emergent environments, meaning everything you need to navigate them is already baked in and hiding in plain sight. What’s interesting about the dinners is that they are similar to this idea but not linear. There is a beginning, middle and end and a single universal goal: to eat. The tools then are all opportunities for finding different paths through. What I find fascinating is shown in the case of the paper bag. In each dinner only one guest decided to use the paper bag as a plate and it was never my intent to use the bag for this purpose. This shows that based on universal logic and common mental models we can arrive, within reason, at the same conclusions given a set of basic parameters. But more importantly, we can generate natural reactions even independent of the designers intentions, to the way we are navigating these problems. In other words, it’s important for the guest to think “I figured this out” or in the words of Justin “I beat the system” versus “I did what the designer wanted me to.”. To be able to design for this reaction consistently is an incredible idea, how do we begin to design for intentional discovery?
I have a four more weeks left till thesis’s end and I’m struggling to formalize all of this into a condensed thesis. Am very happy to receive feedback and opinions.
Big thanks again to POD for lending me their hot plates. Much love to Gaia Orain for menu advice, cooking expertise and overall emotional support. And big thanks to Beth Wernet for the amazing documentation of the evening! Lastly, thank you to the guests for coming with open minds and making it an incredible evening.
The Non-Traditionalist Dinner: Part Deux Timelapse from Alex Todaro on Vimeo.
The past two days have been a difficult journey into the depths of Macbook hard-drive maintenance. My computer has failed to start up and the crisis struck when I realized only half of my data was backed up. Four Apple visits, one Tekserve visit, a lot of rebooting into "safe mood", 15 near breakdown's, and two days later, my computer now rests in the hands of the Apple IT department getting a shiny new hard drive (and Airport card…ooooooh). Thank god for Eric from Tekserve, that strange hermit of a man, you taught me how to beat the system with an activity command called "FSCK" (Of course). My data is now safe...
A good family friend of my Mother's dropped by the studio today and blessed me with a mega care package. Handmade chocolates from Napa Valley, cured salami's and an olive bread loaf from Eataly. It was a grad students dream. I decided to celebrate this gift by sharing it with some class mates all the while testing some methods for my thesis.
Cassandra Michel, one of the Products of Design students has been exploring alternative methods for mindfulness. She says that while activities like meditation help with mindfulness, people have trouble finding the time. So how can we use more of our day-to-day activities in tandem for mindfulness training? As part of her research she is hosting a dinner that will try and focus the five senses and their relationship to eating. If we can find techniques at the table to be mindful then we are creating new positive relationships with our rote behaviors. As an initial testing of some of her ideas we decided to blindfold ourselves, put on noise-canceling ear-muffs and feed one another while in a sense-deprived state.
We quickly realized that out experience was bias'ed since we knew what food we would be eating but regardless we came across some interesting things. The first being the intimate state you were put in when someone was feeding you, especially when you have no sensory control of the experience. There was a heightened awareness to what faculties were still available. Smell was rich, taste was saturated and more than anything, the time in between events created a new form of tension and expectation for what would come next. You found yourself anticipating flavors and textures, and being fully aware of them when they hit your tongue since you had no expectations from your own choice.
We tried a few different methods. The first being just feeding one another while the other was stripped of sound and site. We then tried playing with texture, for example I would put a piece of bread in Cassy's hand and then feed her a piece of chocolate. This begins to play with association and different suggestions of synesthesia. By forming these relationships the context of the consumption was changed and there was more of a narrative created for the eater. We talked about how we might provide rich smells for diners while only serving them plain rice. Would the illusion of taste transfer?
Cassy later tried a series of experiments where she would allow me to experience the food in different ways, such as smell and touch and site, but didn't allow me to eat until the very end. By playing with time and withholding from taste we started to see which senses triggered more powerfully the desire to taste. Smell had a lot of power in this regard.
We ended the experiment by talking about the pacing of the event. In my past experiments Ive remarked on the structure of presenting courses, saying that each one is like a chapter in a story. based on this logic, how might we constrict the senses over each course to heighten guests experience of the food? How can we gradually disarm them of their senses without it being too overwhelming at first?
"In a recent study in Public Diplomacy Magazine, more than half of the 140 people surveyed said that eating a country's cuisine led them to think more positively about that country. And more than two-thirds felt that countries in a state of conflict could benefit from gastrodiplomacy programs."
- NPR: Gastrodiplomacy
In a recent article by NPR, Gastrodiplomacy is talked about as a new way to foster understanding between different countries. While food has always (albeit it sometimes subtly) been a part of international relations, a course by Johanna Mendelson-Forman at the School of international Service aims to bridge the gaps of understanding by way of food.
Cuisine as a communication tool has been on the rise in the past few years whether it's Conflict Kitchen, who only serves food from countries that the United States is in conflict with, or even The White House who developed a Diplomatic Culinary Partnership Initiative in 2012 to send members of the Chef Corps to American embassies abroad on public diplomacy missions to teach about American cuisine. Similar programs have been developed in Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, & Peru.
What I find fascinating about food is that it is the common denominator. A means to an end that has a rich history of variation and processes that speak volumes about the cultures it came from. Even at the regional level, food varies in it's processing, preparation and pairings. To highlight these differences and see them as strengths for unifying people together just makes sense. The right amount of tension in varying rituals with a delicious incentive baked right in.
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
This theory most prominent in literature supposes that evoking emotion is a matter of properly setting the stage, so to speak. Eliot believed that emotion as an idea was non-objective and could not merely be pointed at in order to be understood. It was the gestalt of contextual events and objects the created the sum of empathy. The largest criticism of course was that the methodology didn't take into account the possibility of subjective differentiation, i.e. my formula for sadness involves a different stage versus your formula for sadness. Regardless fascinating parallel to the things I've been thinking about. Objects and environments often have universal connotations, how many layers of supportive context do you need to specify an emotional outcome?
"…active social participation in which any nonspecialist is empowered to take the initiative to question something within a given discipline, acquire knowledge in a non institutionally sanctioned way, and assume authority to interpret that knowledge… the motive is not to replace the specialist but to augment specialization with other models that have legitimate claims to producing and interpreting knowledge"
The form of utensils and cookware has a long history that is not only telling to cultural practices but to our own evolution as a species. Nearly 10,000 years ago we start to see skeletons without teeth, a corollary to the invention of clay pots that allowed food to be broken down into a mushy consistency for the first time, giving people without teeth the ability to get an abundance of nutrients. In Chinese cuisine having a knife at the table was considered violent and obtuse, therefore ingredients had to be processed to bite-sized pieces which encouraged the use of a single utensil, the chopstick. Utensils are the baseline of eating, they set the stage for the type of meal, they forecast which dishes will be served, they speak to the philosophy of the eating style and they influence the behaviors that will happen around the table.
For my latest thesis experiment I wanted to create a scenario that focused on abstracting the form of the utensils given. If a fork is the signifier to stabbing and leveraging then how do our assumptions change when one isn’t present, or when it’s replaced with a thin piece of acrylic? Looking at this idea simply I decided to host a dinner engagement where the guest were given non-traditional utensils to eat with. The constraints were simple. Four strangers are invited to a four-course meal. At each place setting there is a napkin with a symbol on it. The symbol is a demarkation for each bag of “tools” that are given to the guests. In this case, I broke down each symbol and it’s corresponding bag of tools into abstracted categories of actions at a table.
The contents of each bag adhere to an internal logic set by myself that softly relate to each of these actions. Whether or not that is implicit with each set of tools is irrelevant, the symbols are a starting point for differentiation.
The table itself and all of it’s contents / materials were hand-built by me so the constraints of the meal could be as specific as possible. The center trays are to be filled over time and are oriented in a way to give each guest priority access to parts of the meal at different times: Drinks on one end, main course on the other. The bottom of the table is covered in un-adhered tile which is moveable. The only objects (besides the appetizers) present on the table upon arrival are the napkins and a set of 4 thing-long sticks. The intent of the tables and tools is to promote creativity and collaboration amongst guests, having them use lateral thinking as well as adapting their physicality to different needs at the table.
Beyond abstracting utensils there were specific observations I wanted to make during this experiment.
With the loss of traditional tools, what new tools are built or repurposed to fill the need? Do these objects mimic their predecessors or maintain qualities specific to their own “object-ness”.
With an abstracted set of utensils, do other traditional rituals and behaviors around the table begin to change? What new rituals and behaviors are created?
With a group of strangers using this set of abstracted utensils, how are ideas adopted and/or abandoned amongst them. What creates consensus versus deviation? What solidifies adoption versus abandonment?
Lastly, and this may be the grad-school talking, I wanted to see how this type of scenario would ease the introduction and interactions between strangers. Although I feel I knew the answer to this question before I started (more later).
I sent my invitation to 12 or so people with the text “Come with an open mind and an open stomach.” Of those who came it was important to me to not have a strong established relationship with any of them, I found the experiment to be more interesting if we were all full-to-quasi strangers with one another. The final respondents were an artist, a product design student, an innovation strategist, and a wellness therapist. Each guest was unaware of who and how many were coming.
The introduction:
Miles Davis flutters in the background of a wide open loft-style room on the eleventh floor of my school building. In the back corner sits a table, flanked with two large studio lights. As the guest enter through the elevator they are greeted by me, bearded, nice slacks with suspenders and a collared shirt.
“Welcome to the Non-Traditionalist Dinner. Would you like a drink?” I reach back to the counter and retrieve a plastic syringe filled with wine.
“Appetizers are on the table, make yourself comfortable and we’ll get started in just a moment.”
As the guests walked in and grabbed their drinks the first signifier to the tone of the evening had been granted. The tools for consumption will be odd. Francesca later in the night remarked on how her initial impression of the room, stark, jazzy, formal was immediately flipped once I handed her a syringe to drink out of.
As the guests took their seats they began to identify the materials on the table. An uncut loaf of bread, tomatoes and mozzarella drizzled in olive oil, some butter and salt and pepper. There were no place settings beyond the napkins and a few thin wooden sticks on the opposite ends of the table. The guests squeezed the napkin, trying to find the utensils. With no success, they followed tradition and began unrolling the napkins.
By design the napkins I made were unconventionally large and shaped like a handkerchief. My intent was to create a garment that would be tied around each persons neck, referring to the 16th century tradition of diners covering their entire front side with large pieces of cloth and assisting one another with tying it around their necks. This became the first opportunity for distinction amongst the guests. Anna was the first person to tie the napkin around her neck referring to it as a sort of bib. Jokingly Francesca takes the bib reference and instead of tying the napkin she shoves the end in the front of her shirt. David remarks that the bib is infantile and places the napkin in his lap. Jenny then follows Anna’s suggestion and ties the handkerchief around her neck. After some variations are tried Anna, David and Francesca resolve to having the napkin in their laps while Jenny maintains the napkin around her neck for the rest of the meal.
Side note: In my initial sketch (above) only one person is represented wearing the napkin around their neck while the rest have them in their laps. The sketch is exactly identical to the orientation and action at the meal.
Although the symbols weren’t explicitly talked about at the meal, in follow up I found out that there was an affinity to having some sort of visual differentiation to each individual at the table. It was enough of a cue to highlight and standardize the possibility of different outcomes and procedures for each guest’s experience during the meal.
Once each guest was ready they began to eat. David opens by grabbing the loaf of bread while remarking poetically “Shall we break bread?”. He grabs it unabashedly with his bare hands and rips a piece off the end while smiling. This gesture alone I think set the benevolent tone for the behaviors that followed throughout the evening. The symbolic gesture of this phrase and action is so strong. It opens the door not only to sharing a meal but to sharing the self. I cannot take credit for this gesture as I left the bread uncut simply for difficulties sake but it was a beautiful moment that gave context to the idea.
While everyone was getting settled, some were picking at the food with their fingers, grabbing quick bites here and there. I had left no instruction on expected behaviors so at this point there were still questions looming on what was supposed to be happening. Francesca begins to grab two of the long sticks on her end of the table and shows them to the rest of the group.
“So there’s two of these.” She claims. Jenny chimes in asking, “Can we break them?”, inferring that if broken in half they would be perfect as chopsticks. Francesca internalizes the idea for a moment reiterating, “Can we? That’s actually a good idea.” Excitedly Jenny supports the idea telling Francesca, “Do it!” Francesca then breaks the stick in half and proudly begins using it as the first tool at the table. Immediately after she does this David, Anna and Jenny grab a stick and mimic the behavior. This model is important to point out.
None of the tools presented have a specific intended use. Obviously there are formal qualities to each that suggest better use cases for specific actions over other tools, but there is very little context to what should be used for what and when. Furthermore It was never declared that tools could be manipulated (such as breaking them) to fit the guests needs. In the scenario right at the beginning we see a incredible example of collaborative lateral problem solving. An object is presented to the group, a mental model is formed of what it is and then it is abstracted to what it could be used for, that potential use case is presented to the group, the group then compares it with their previous mental model and then they either support it, deny it or evolve it. Once that ‘script’ has been run through, the outcome is a ubiquitous model shared by everyone who witnessed it. It creates definition of what’s possible and acceptable, and it creates consensus of those ideas.
This model is not new, for this instance however I’m not looking at any one particular model in the wild, rather pulling straight form the behaviors set in this context. But it’s this context that is important. By focusing on problem solving methods around the table the goal is clearly defined: guests have to appropriate disparate objects to carry food from tray to mouth. The interesting part for me though is that at a certain point the model breaks and there is a sense of emergence in the ideas that form. Guests initially rely on their understanding of what’s expected from the tools they should be creating i.e. what replaces a fork, what replaces a knife? This is nested in the traditional model of what is expected at a typical dining experience. My assumption is this is why chopsticks were the first tools to be created, it was the closest neighbor to what was familiar. Eventually though as different tools are introduced new options are presented and the task becomes less of what can we mimic, and more what can we create to optimize the experience.
About ten minutes into the guests sitting down I delivered the brown bags to the table. Each bag had a different assortment of objects and were sealed with a sticker matching the symbol on each guests napkin. Thinking about this now, the symbols had an occult quality to them and were the only navigable constant throughout the experience. The opening ceremony was a great thing to watch.
Similar to the model I showed above, it prompted a series of each guest holding up an object and commenting on a potential use. Because the menu wasn’t disclosed before hand, nobody knew what the challenge might be with the food, therefore objects took on multiple potentials such as “we could cut with this, or we could serve with it too.” Other objects were intentionally included to disrupt a 1:1 appropriation, such as a plastic dinosaur, model magic, wooden cubes and a toothbrush. The hope with these stranger objects was to push the lateral thinking. If there is no association to eating with a tool, from a formal point of view, then it prompts the guest to push the limits of how they can navigate the experience. By including these random objects they color the whole table with a different perspective.
One model that continued to appear was the piggy-backing of use-cases. For example, when opening the bag, Jenny removed two concave acrylic circles about 4 inches in diameter. Francesca notices the objects and comments on how they’re like little trays that could be used as plates. Now that the idea of plates has surfaced, every object is subjected to being applied towards the idea of “plates”. Jenny quickly scans the table and picks up the brown bag commenting that it too could be used as a plate. Since Francesca didn’t have anything in her bag that formally represented a plate she adopted the idea and proceeded to fold her bag down and place it in front of her like a plate. At this point deviation in ideas started to occur, Jenny offered David one of the acrylic disks and nobody beyond Francesca adopted the use of the bag as a plate.
The piggy-backing also happened later in the first course when David presented the little plastic dinosaur, at first it seemed like a novelty item and David put it on top of the camera’s located in the middle of the table. Jenny quickly grabbed the dinosaur and commented on how it could be used as a stand for the chopsticks they recently created. Once this idea surfaced a few permutations were tried. Jenny grabbed a binder clip and rested chopstick on them and then Anna, not knowing what to do with her rubber bands began resting her chopsticks on them. This behavior, the “resting of utensils on other things” was consistent across the entire meal and made me realize how natural that is for all of us, even in the absence of a plate and an entirely sterile surface, whatever tool people were using for consumption they eventually rested it on something else.
At this point in the meal each guest is still reflecting on how they might use the tools. What’s interesting is that the objects become a form of content. They are talked about formally and contextually and become the catalyst not only for inquiry but also anecdotal conversation. The thing to point out is that each object becomes a reference to a specific type of conversation. In the beginning of the meal it acts as a primer for questioning, allowing participants to ease into a relational dynamic without the pressure of ‘getting to know one another’ in typical fashion. It becomes interesting to begin building identity through quality of thought and collaboration as opposed to starting off the night with “so, what do you do?”. It wasn’t until about 45 minutes into the experience when that mode of conversation was finally breached, and even after David asked “So what do you guys do.” It was critiqued by Anna as being a masculine question and adapted to “How do you spend your time.”. I can’t claim this critique being a symptom of the experience but it’s worth noting the timeline of when it finally occurred, allowing for a fuller spectrum of getting to know someone through different means.
The Salad:
When I presented the second course there had been enough individual experimentation for each guest to form a base of working knowledge with their own tool set. The model magic specifically became a bit of a puzzle. In the frame of food, the guests questioned if this mysterious white spongy substance in a glass jar was edible or not. David began this course by openly asking, “So what do you think of this.” While patting a flattened piece of the model magic. Jenny realized that the model magic began breaking down and sticking to surfaces when it got wet. So when the model magic was proposed as being an additional side-dish for food, she shared her experience and the material was abandoned for the rest of the meal.
At this point each guest had some similarities with the tools they were using, such as the chopsticks. More importantly a baseline of initial tools was created and with the introduction of the second course a new challenge was presented that re-ignited the potential utility of each object. This becomes the first instigator to abandoning what’s comfortable and experimenting further with what’s available. Now that guest’s had met the initial challenge of finding tools to eat wth, they still felt obligated to a larger set of possibilities. Jenny begins by abandoning the side-dish that her drink was served in initially, reasoning that once the liquid had been consumed the dish resumes it’s functionality as a object to hold salad. Since this goes against the idea of the experience she cast it aside claiming “it feels like cheating.” Jenny then goes on to experimenting beyond the chopsticks. She grabs a large binder clip and begins picking out slices of mango from the salad. This action lasts for a single try after Jenny realizes not only is it cumbersome, but messy. She then continues trying the rest of her objects to eat the salad and eventually lands on a thing rectangle of acrylic and adopts it as her main tool for the rest of the meal.
The Gun:
There’s an old phrase in theater. If a gun is presented in the first act, it has to be fired by the third. I included a squirt gun in one of the bags for this very reason. Who would fire the gun? This scenario was one of those scenarios where you have an idea in your head and then the people actually running through it put your idea to shame.
Initially the gun came from Francesca’s bag, the only thing that was said about it was “This could be used for water... or wine.” She gestured the trigger motion as she said it. By the second course the gun sat mostly dormant until Jenny asked for it from Francesca and started to fill it. The first tactic was to eye-drop wine into the gun. Jenny quickly realizing that this was not efficient took Anna’s advice and just completely submerged the gun in the wine carrier. What happens next, happens so fast and so naturally that it beholds an essence to itself that’s so incredibly brilliant. Francesca looks over and ask’s what Jenny is doing, Anna replies that she is filling it and then jokingly adds that she’s doing it so she can shoot it in Francesca’s mouth. This comment elects Francesca as the receiver and is never contested. While Jenny is filling the gun everyone is jesting about what’s going to happen and Francesca begins preparing herself by covering her torso, her head and her eyes with borrowed napkins from Anna and Jenny. The gun’s filled, Francesca’s covered and they’re ready to go but at the last moment Jenny just hands the gun to David in a fit of laughter saying “You do it!”. David grabs the gun almost without thinking about it, he points, shoots, the gun doesn’t fire, he compensates by squeezing faster and boom! Shoots Francesca right in the nose. Wine goes everywhere.
What Francesca did was brave, she volunteered to be vulnerable, and why I find this bit so fascinating is that it happened only 17 minutes after everyone had just met one another. If the connotation of an object in the context of an experience has the ability to open up strangers to this type of liberation in that short amount of time then what else can it do?
Main Course:
After the salad I decided to remove the chopsticks from the table. Although there had been further experimentation beyond them, it still was the easiest and most familiar toolset available. The group understood and it opened up another phase of seeing the tools in a new lens. For this course I served lentils with roasted eggplant which I estimated to be the most difficult cuisine with the provided tools.
This became the biggest point of departure for each of the guests use of the objects. Everyone had there own way of approaching the problem.
By this time the guests began talking more intimately and the conversation which was initially sparked by the objects, such as the use of rubber gloves in different forms of massage, took it’s own course. The challenge of eating with the tools was solved and an internal logic to etiquette was formed. Guests were reaching across one another to fill their syringes with wine, they were using gloves to gather more salad, potatoes were being stabbed with eye-droppers, they were freely breaking more bread with there hands and a new routine was established. If we could say that the initial tension in the meal was caused by navigating the food from tray to mouth, by this point a certain harmony was established. Thus a new baseline was created. The objects at this point were a non-issue.
Dessert:
For dessert I presented a white chocolate mousse with a raspberry drizzle. It was fluffy & delicious. What’s worth pointing out for this course was the casual nature of everyone. The tools that were most useful had been used already, and like I described above, a logic to the behavior had been created. However once the dessert was served Anna looked at her remaining objects and saw that she still had a set of popsicle sticks that hadn’t been touched yet. Without presenting or negotiating she just offered a single stick to everyone at the table and they kindly accepted. In some ways I feel this is a strong gesture of trust, but it also was the most practical option at this point since everyone else’s tools were covered in food from previous courses.
After the sticks had been used for ten minutes or so, the guests re-examined the remaining objects and saw it as an opportunity for one last try at experimentation. Francesca, nodding back to the use of the plastic tubes for water, stuck one end in the mousse and tried to drink it. Jenny, still not having used her toothbrush took it out of the packaging, grabbed a big glob of the mousse and began brushing her teeth with the dessert.
This concludes the meal.
Reflection:
After having this meal I’ve spoken with a number of people about it’s implications. Amongst these conversations a few points have risen to the surface. The first is making a distinction of where the design is. In an empirical sense design’s success is measured by it’s ability to be repeatable. If I were to replicate this dinner I’m afraid that the context might skew that opportunity. Different guests, different backgrounds, it’s very possible that other guests might not shoot each other in the face with a squirt gun. Because this is an experiment I’m mostly concerned with the high level patterns it allowed me to see, in this case I’m less concerned about the object themselves and more so with how those objects are unlocking or facilitating new behaviors. I think when I presented this in class there was confusion around if my intent was to redesign utensils. I’ll be clear now, I am NOT trying to redesign utensils.
The table, the products on the table, and the experience as a whole is a framework that can be positioned intentionally to create specific outcomes. As an analogue think about seeing a website for the first time, the aesthetic sets the ethos, the language determines the personality and the value offerings, and the position of the buttons and media determines the path through the experience. It’s basic UX. So looking at the dining experience, this is an experiment in applying that same process to it.
The problem I see, or better yet, the question I’m asking is how do we start to position this environment to elicit behaviors beyond ‘playful’. It’s easy to be haphazard and experimental, It’s in our nature. If this experiment tells me anything it’s not that people are more vulnerable when they play together but rather how long it takes before we start to break convention and how strong the signifiers need to be to lead us in an alternative direction against our own behavioral biases.
The pacing of the meal itself I found was very important. By having separate courses and adhering to that tradition, it allowed for re-do’s and eventual ‘mastering’. Each course became it’s own chapter that exemplified a specific character. Any new experience has to be eased into, this is the part of the framework that allows that to happen. Like any good narrative it needs an arc. The courses house that arc.
There are also traditions that will not break (at least according to this). Napkins will be placed in laps, utensils will be rested on other objects, and if there is opportunity to explore it will be taken. In this same line of thinking, the table and it’s guests have to move forward together to push the constraints of what’s appropriate and possible. A rubber glove can be a dormant non-object, or it can be a barrier for grabbing food, it can be a catalyst for a conversation, or it can be an item of repulsion. This was true in this meal and all of those factors were understood at one point or another by everyone at the table. I’m left asking how I can be more strategic about presenting objects that will resonate emotionally and ask for specific uses amongst guests.
In my research I’ve noticed that collaborative dinners of this kind come with specific prompts. Most of the time, such as in Jeffersonian dinners, the prompt comes in the form of a question which each guest at the table has to speak to. I.e. “What was the most powerful teaching moment you’ve had recently.” After the prompt is offered, guests go in systematic order and equalize the amount of time they deliver their responses. It’s democratic and structured for efficiency, but I question if it’s at the cost of being genuine. I think my holy grail right now is finding a method not to prescribe behavior, but setting up a scenario that allows for specific behavior to emerge without being contrived.
The occult spectacle of my meal was helpful to gauge what needs to be present versus what is superfluous in generating authentic responses. It was noted that the food itself was of a caliber that commanded respect and commitment. Had I served something more typical, such as beans and franks, it was speculated that the experience would loose some of it’s validity. The aesthetic of the table, the invitation, and the napkins also spoke to this. By being thoughtful from the beginning it encourages guest to meet the experience with the same candor.
At the top level my next step is designing a meal to prompt a specific emotion that isn’t playful. I’m going to spend the next few days condensing all of my thinking and experimenting thus far, and picking out the threads through all of it. Only 7 weeks left, much to do and still have to point the dial towards the finish line.
In good taste.
I compiled this visualization below of the dinner and the discussions that prompted the use of the objects. It is by no means perfect but it's an initial stab at mapping the relationships. You can find the full pdf by clicking on the picture.
You can also find the full photo set from the evening here.
Huge thank you to everyone who helped me make this dinner happen. Gaia, Marcos, Gabrielle, Clementine, Daria, Boris, My classmates, and of course all the guests who came with open minds and empty stomachs.
All photographs by Daria Lombroso. Hire her if you need pictures, she's amazing.
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