Yesterday’s news: anti-advertgames

February 3, 2006

“Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all. Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding. You’ll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest companies of the world.”

So state the Italian artist-activist makers of the McDonalds anti-advertgame, Molleindustria. I don’t know if the fact that the rainforest is being destroyed to grow soy beans for hamburger meat or that cows are fattened with industrial garbage in feed lots is a secret anymore, but playing the online game illustrates that it definitely is a challenge balancing the economic factors of selling a burger without turning into a blood sucking evil-ass. After playing McDonalds for an hour, I had not once succeeded in making a profit and in fact I caused the company to go bankrupt every few minutes.

And if you’re thinking, ‘couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys’, have a go.

The tip off is from Regine at we-make-money-not-art, a trend and technology blog. Thank you!

• Eric Schlosser’s must-read investigation on the fast food industry is titled Fast Food Nation
• NYTimes review of Fast Food Nation
• If you’re fluent in Dutch, you’ll love de Keuringsdienst van Waarde’s humourous yet disturbing consumer investigations streaming from the KVW website
• The only English subtitled de Keuringsdienst van Waarde broadcasts are about the development, design and production of a slave-free chocolate bar. Turns out, producing chocolate in which slave (yes, slave) labour is not part and parcel to the production practice is hard as can be.

debra at 9:21 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

Grow yer own dang food
(part 1)

January 30, 2006

Image of sprouting bread courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro

Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately thirty people. I had all but forgotten this part of my life until recently, when my Food Atelier students at the Design Academy Eindhoven started working on ways to grow their own food. The work of two enthusiastic students got my wings flapping enough for me to dare revisit my past. These are the images from the first trials, theirs and mine.

After initial attempts at growing mung sprouts in bread (see above), Cygalle Shapiro is successfully growing a ready-made ‘salad on salad’.

Images courtesy Cygalle Shapiro

images top to bottom: sprouts in bread, salad on salad, sprouting experiments courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro, copyright Cygalle Shapiro 2005 – 2006. Contact culiblog for further information.

Liora Rosin is growing sprouts in labneh, a fresh yoghurt cheese, commonly made at home. For Rosin it is important that the seeds are grown within the labneh in order to transmit the flavour of the sprouted seed into the delicately tangy cheese.

images top to bottom: home sprouting installation, soaking, lactic fermentation sill; courtesy of Liora Rosin, copyright Liora Rosin 2005 – 2006

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all had a designated windowsill for lactic fermentation?

Having resolved to practice what I preach in 2006, I am also working on growing sprouts on labneh and find that the experiments coördinate nicely with my developing a good recipe for yoghurt ravioli.

This is a cute disaster of basil seeds rotting into overly dry labneh. Seeds that become gelatinous when they are moistened (e.g., basil, buckwheat, watercress) are poor candidates for immediate immersion on or in the yoghurt medium.

images top to bottom: sprout collection 2x, basil on labneh, playing with mistakes, pretending sampler, curd seed brittle; Debra Solomon

The results of an unsuccessful attempt at growing woody spice seeds (dill, coriander, cumin, kummel) in yoghurt medium with the intention of flavouring the labneh were not especially delicious, although visually exciting. The linen and the seeds texture the labneh beautifully and I look forward to spin a few successful recipes from these experiments soon.

• Lori Alden’s cheese definition site
• N55: Manual for city farming plant modules
• N55: Manual for home hydroponic unit
• Sproutman’s sprout bag. Any idiot can make one, but Sproutman is somehow selling them! My experience is that growing sprouts on wet linen works much better than growing them in jars. I have never tried sprouting in a linen bag.

Here are other urban gardening solutions, mostly rooftop gardening related:

• Rooftop Gardening link hub. Yes, it’s a trend!
• Plant vegetables on your rooftops, like they do in Egyptian cities
• Toronto rooftop gardening project
• Greening Gothan Project, NYC also on the roof
• BLDG blog on rooftop farming in London
• Treehugger reports on Toronto rooftop gardening facts and figures

technorati tags: rooftop gardening, urban gardening, food security, sustainability, farming, food-related design, agricultural diversification

debra at 11:52 | Comments (10) | post to del.icio.us

Rural design conference scheduled for September 2006

January 21, 2006

(above: Wheatfield, a large public work by Agnes Denes, image copyright Agnes Denes)

Chapeau to John Thackara at the Doors of Perception blog who reports today about a rural design conference scheduled to take place September 4-7 2006 (somewhere) in the UK. Just have a look at what’s being developed for the programme! I am pleased to see that it is all about establishing and strengthening real connections between (urban) cultural producers and rural agriculture producers to the benefit of both.

In a conference forerunner in July of 2005, this is what they were talking about: farmers as curators – an international Rural Biennale for 2007, sustainable farm diversification, rural tourism, food marketing initiatives and staging the Rural Biennale as an integral part of a European Region of Rural Cultures and Farmer Creativity celebration.

To the list of interesting subjects already discussed and in the planning for September 2006, I would like to add: ‘rural farmer to urban farmer advisory partnerships for urban gardening/farming initiatives’. I can’t help but wonder if the experience and knowledge of the rural farmer can help urban farming inititives such as this wonderful urban farming project in East L.A from being under threat of closure due to urban land-use issues. Injecting (cultural) life into family farms suffering brunt of (European) Agricultural Policy might be just the ticket for rejuvenating a way of life under threat of extinction. Might not the urban farmer benefit from being part of this discussion and network?

• European Rural Culture events page
• Littoral – new zones for critical art practice. An excellent organisation website, with informative links on everything from an extremely mixed bag of individual artists and designers that use nature / agriculture / landscape as a creative platform, to cultural documents on foot and mouth disease!
• Cultural Documents of the Foot and Mouth Crisis in the UK
• Urban food gleaning project by Fallen Fruit
• The South Central Farms website is good reading if you want to get fired up!
• Pruned, weblog on landscape architecture and related fields.
• Pruned blog entry about South Central Farms in L.A.
• Pruned on artist Agnes Denes
• Brilliant films by Raymond Depardon about the demise of French farming communities in the Lozere were shown at the 2005 Int’l Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) as part of a special tribute programme.
• Farming as a a landscaping trend in suburbia! (Landscaping is responsible for more than 80% of water use in the suburbs.)
• Doors of Perception review of urban farming proposal by Dutch architect Winy Maas
• Non-sanctioned urban gardening in Istanbul, entry in culiblog
• Innovation Network Rural Areas and Agricultural Systems

technorati tags: rural design, food security, sustainability, farming, food-related art, food-related design, food-related film, Raymond Depardon, agricultural diversification, agricultural policy, urban gardening

debra at 11:47 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us