Food Is--

In the creation of Food Is-- I hoped to figure out a bit of what food meant to other people and to myself. To this end I went around and interviewed people I encountered with an audio recorder about what food was for them in a sentence, or even better, in a word. I was surprised and intrigued by the responses I received. 

The idea for the project came after I had an idea for some food I wanted to make--in this case, carbonated ice cream. I'd pitched the idea to a number of people; some told me it would work, some just sounded disgusted by it. It remained a vague project trapped in the "sometime I'll do this" category. It didn't seem feasible. A test batch at 1/3 my final batch seemed to prove it was too onerous for a large audience. Other ideas for the chat didn't appeal to me, unfortunately.

So I did it anyway.

The audio portion of Food Is-- I hoped would be something people would listen to and find something they identified with. After they had identified with something, they would also learn some of what other people felt and consider more deeply what food was to them.

I chose a basic French Vanilla frozen custard recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I like vanilla as a basic flavor. It gets a bad rap, but it’s a classic and is wildly popular for a reason. I love experimenting with other flavors—especially weird and crazy things—but decided while I was experimenting with the carbonation aspect of the ice cream I should probably choose a flavor I understood better.

Making the actual ice cream was something I hoped to do during my performance, but I instead chose to make it just beforehand, in order to make sure it remained carbonated for as long as possible, hopefully at least until people were able to eat it.

What I hoped to achieve by actually carbonating the ice cream—beyond just freezing it with dry ice for the novelty—was to play a little bit with people’s conceptions of a familiar thing—vanilla ice cream—and make it less familiar, to invite people to think about the food they were eating. This is an idea I have borrowed from haute cuisine restaurants such as Grant Achatz’s Alinea which plays not only with time-honored techniques but with molecular gastronomy. I consider Alinea the textual inspiration for this piece.

Were I to perform this piece again, I would give more thought to how I actually presented the audio and ice cream. I would have explained a little more, and while people were eating asked them to think about the food they were eating.

All in all, I really enjoyed my piece and was happy with the results. I especially enjoyed other people’s pieces and just had a good time that night.

Dean Wright--Committed to Change

Dean Wright--Committed to Quality

Artist Statement:

 “Artists expand social imagination, helping us envision the transformations we hope to bring about.”

In this statement by Arlene Goldbard, artists are seen as a catalyst for change: creating an alternate, improved reality within a medium or artistic space. I would add to Goldbard’s assertion that artists seek to capture and preserve the social transformations we perceive around us. Art is partly about creating, but it is first about seeing. As we each walk around, we act like a black suit coat in an apartment filled with cat hair—that is, we constantly attract and interact with the bits and pieces of life that never seem to be far away  (though most of these bits of life are vastly preferable to shed feline follicles). Perhaps a better analogy would be like some sort of mobile plant—soaking up light, air, nutrients, water, and synthesizing something new out of the disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

Sometimes artists create something new. Sometimes they act as storytellers, seeking instead to portray something that was there all along. Such was the case with Dean Wright, who I initially met at a panel regarding the future of food at the Wall several months ago. At this time, he didn’t have the time he would have liked to explain his role in making BYU Dining Services into the kind of operation he hoped it could be. He invited students to come and speak with him personally at a later time. Remembering his invitation, I took him up on his offer and went to go see him.

We had hoped to maybe see a kitchen in the MTC, but instead Dean took us on a full-blown tour of his pride and joy, the Culinary Support Center, or CSC. The CSC is a place where all of BYU’s food prep operations have been consolidated for efficiency, food safety, sustainability and quality.

It became apparent very quickly that we would not be able to adequately portray all the things that go on in the CSC in a short film, so deciding what we would keep ended up being very difficult. For brevity’s sake we were forced to eliminate several interesting side narratives about baking, soup and cheese making, and the creation of compost. In the end, we felt what we had gave at least an idea of how much goes on in the CSC.

I was impressed to learn that Dean Wright was the instigating force in favor of the CSC. Dean truly believes in its ability to improve BYU and Provo’s food quality, as well as its capacity to create a smaller carbon footprint. I am reminded of a quote in The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkein in which Frodo expresses to Gandalf his sadness that he was born to see times of uncertainty and strife. Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All they can decide is what to do with the time that has been given them.” Here, Gandalf emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility to improve where we are, when we can.
I feel Dean embodies this ideal, and I hope the short doc Mike and I created helps tell his story and the transformation in our society he has been seeking to bring about.