BLoooOOOG

Alienation in science fiction：

“ People who dislike science fiction see it as unrealistic literature of escape, a shallow-minded distraction from the serious consideration of things as they are. Those who like science fiction insist it is really about the world we live in—at most an allegorical representation of reality, at least logical extrapolation based upon and commenting on things as they are. But good science fiction is neither an escape from reality nor a description of it; Darko Suvin is wise enough never to forget that. He sees science fiction as “a developed oxymoron, a realistic irreality,” and he presents a definition of it that accounts both for its science and for its fiction”

“‘Cognitive estrangement” is the “factual reporting of fictions.” For Suvin, this has the significant effect of separating or “estranging” us from our usual assumptions about reality. “Estrangement” is Suvin’s version of Bertold Brecht’s “Verfremdung,” usually translated as “alienation.” Brecht was talking about describing familiar things as if they were unfamiliar; not quite logically, Suvin borrows the phrase to comment on how science fiction describes unfamiliar things as if they were familiar. But for Suvin the final effect is the same; by Brechtian distancing or by the unfamiliarity of science fictional worlds, we are estranged from our assumptions about reality and forced to question them.”

‘The Cognitive Estrangement of Darko Suvin’ by Perry Nodelman in 1981

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Reflection：

closer to us (familiar) ————speculate future(using alienation)————brings the question and tension.

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Two experiments on the science fiction idea are not working really well,

so I try to re summarize the entire food-changing journey in my research, to find is there anything I can do？

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Space is still in my future speculation, but at least there is a trend being shown clearly.

Position

In the current post-capitalism scenario, a “hybrid” relationship between humans, machines, and nature is intertwining and influencing the food culture (industry). 

Using graphic design to build a space that lets the audience revisit and speculate this relationship/status on an anthropological scale becomes urgent.

Last week’s peer’s view：

• what are other brands represent？ not only Huel
• graphic design’s role?

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To find a pattern：

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Color： black, white, and beige/grey

Element： straight line, san-serif font, abstract color block, numbers, graphs

Lackness： nature image from the raw material

similar to the modernism style in graphic angle

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In Aesthetic Level

a better and simplified way of eating, sound similar to what happened in Modernism movement, the Art Nouveau (largely using nature pattern) style is being rejected. Decoration becomes a crime. Functional，and mechanize in this science advance age.

“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.” 

“Ornament and Crime” (1908) by Adolf Loos, architect against the Art Nouveau（from design and crime） 

In food：

· a surrender to the body = vulgarity, ordinary, tasteless 

· Food additives: color, flavor = decoration = depraved, a reversal path to the civilization, differentiation, and purification

what instead？

remove additive/ decoration

simplify, functional, rational

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A simplify future

simplify every moment (eating with friend, family, self…..) ———— into a single product，speculate an uncomfortable future.

“The history of design is therefore a history of evolving conceptions of the human. To talk about design is to talk about the state of our species.”

Are We Human (2016) by Colomina, B. and Wigley, M. 

• T1, sci-fiction (comic)

· respond to the body forgetting in meal replacement drink

• T2 present product

· Artificial food

· Talk about design is to talk about the state of our species

  as a way to observe society

• T3 combine T1 and T2

· using sci-fiction, and exist Artificial Food to imagine the future 

· reflect on the reality

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· Fasting, diet culture, binge eating to shape the body = unequal relationship (abuse) between mind and body. 

· manage the body in a distance, is an actual separation and antagonism， just like the metaphor “body is the machine” ，are all devalue-ate the body.

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Visual part 1

Method：Design Fiction

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is better defined as a set of design practices that can help us reflect about, emotionally engage with, and potentially critique alternative realities and possible future scenarios.

design fiction artifacts tend to be inspired by emerging technologies and their potential developments and implications

_{(Science Fiction Prototyping, Design Fiction, and Worldbuilding, What Differences? 2021)}

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– Design: method to speculate the future

– open a new perspective, using imagination to give the discussion and debate of now a room

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Visual part 2

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“Individuals today are imbued with and conditioned by a rhythmicity that has reached a stage of almost total mechanicity (as opposed to humanization).”

Philosopher Leroi Gouhran

• Time and money priority = capitalism

• individuals extraneous to themselves, reducing them to mere containers of the capacity for work
• cause the repression and ignorant of body = meal replacement drink

Week 3

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Reflection

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What is working?

· Comic as a medium, which gives a heave topic like “humanity and animality”, and“civilization and nature” a lighter way to present.

· Epitomize people’s patterns using an alien image, which won’t bring offensive visual results.

· Anthropology as a research method.

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what isn’t working？

· For people who don’t know my previous study, there are too many distractions like gender, warfare, race, or identity. 

· Should have more solid evidence on creating each epitomize pattern’s（different breed）, after careful research, interview or experience.

· The story itself isn’t too much related to the ordinary research topic (food, civilization, and nature), should narrow down the focus point.

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Brief

Using the Anthropology discipline method to observe and participate as part of meal replacement food eater. Through analyzing the product and the customers, try to find: what social attitudes are they presenting? What else’s problems are rising? In which way does it become evidence of the complex relationship between civilization and nature?

Method

Anthropology： a discipline, studies humanity, culture, and society

ethnography： using observing and others’ experiences to learn and study a specific group of people or culture that has its pattern. （ tool/method ）

participate observation： an ethnographic research approach, need anthropologist to enter into the target’s living environment, participate their daily routines and build up a relationship to doing the observation.

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“Getting close” minimally requires physical and social proximity to the daily rounds of people’s lives and activities.

_{—— Writing Ethnographic Fieldnote (2011) by Emerson, R.}

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Writing

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Part I

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Observation Analyze

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A black box likes some high-tech product delivered to the consumer’s home. The Logo “Huel” was designed in a non-serif font well-printed above the box. Seems to reflect the attitude of the brand, science, and standards. It is one of the best-selling meal replacement products in the UK market. The name, Huel, comes from a combination of Human and Fuel. “The future of food is inside The box.” printed on the place where open the box. In the promotion, they emphasize this product contains all of the essential daily nutrients for human beings. Sustainability is the brand value. It is vegan and uses minimal packaging and in maximum shelf life. Once you open the box, they will repeat inside, “You‘re a Hueligan now. You’ve made the right choice. Make yourself healthier, save money and help our planet.” The main target customer based on this sentence and their website would be: people who want to lose fat or supplement their body nutrition; busy people eager to save time; And people who want to protect the environment and the plant. For the first-time purchase, the box will contain two packs of products (at least two packs), a plastic shaker, two plastic measuring spoons, a guidebook, a coupon, and a black LOGO T-shirt.

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The product uses a smooth black plastic food seal bag that can be re-sealed once opened. And it has an enlarged Huel logo. If repeated a large number of them are placed together, perhaps look similar to some chemical materials. Even appear in the laboratory is not incongruent, because it emits inorganic luster. On the back of the package, there is a large-scale nutrition Information diagram. The brand states their formula is based on authoritative nutritional guidelines such as RNI (Reference Nutrient Intake). This table attempts to declare its professional, rigorous, and comprehensive in proving nutrition. The functions are listed. However, the “natural” and “organic”, which have been repeatedly touted, are not reflected on the ingredient list. A lot of them are chemically extracted materials. As the “Sweetener: Steviol Glycosides” is normally processed using chemical solvents like acetonitrile, centrifuge, spray dryer, and more(). Including the micronutrient blend added, which are also the products from food and drug factories that involve multiple chemical processes. Its carbon emissions will not reduce as much as consumers expect. This bag of powder is a classic product from the modern food processes. There are no recycling signs on the entire bag. The product isn’t related to how the brand claims in either way.

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The sample was flavored with chocolate, which is the best taste recommend by most consumers. Looking at the powder inside, you can smell the grain and cocoa, and it looks like some coarse flour, with slight impurities. It needs to shake with cold water and serve. The color after shaking is similar to the chocolate milkshake. This liquid doesn’t look much like food, more like medicine, or gasoline. The shaker they give has a mouth similar to the car’s fuel filler. It coupled with the name Huel, brings an illusion of the machine was adding oil. Yet when eaten, it even tastes less like any food. The taste of cocoa is only for covering the taste of the product itself, but it doesn’t work. After the initial taste of chocolate passes, the taste of grain powders emerges, like salted flour washed with cold water and sweetened with substitute sugar. Similar to the sweetener used in Diet Coke, there will be a fake sweetness that lingers in your mouth, and you can’t stop feeling it until you drink something else. Your brain feels cheated and wants something else to eat. Because it’s cold, it doesn’t fill the body with warm energy as hot food does. The whole experience, even though you feel full, there’s still a psychological hunger. Although it comes in different flavors, it still provides a boring eating experience if using it daily.

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Part II

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Last week, I selected the themes of nature and civilization, so this week I began to think about how to fill, modify the original position, and continue my research on food and body.

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Previous study ( part that relates to “Nature and Civilization”)

Modern society has always regarded morality and controlling one’s own desire as a way to divide the primitive animal instinct. Humans who come out of the jungle believe that eliminating their naturalness is an important phase to ensure a civilized society. The concept of nature was created, resulting in an inherent binary opposition between nature and civilization. Basic physical need like ‘Appetites’ is seen as a primitive pursuit that lower than spiritual need. People begin to treat animal nature from concealment to governance and finally become pure abandonment. The animal body we can’t get rid of becomes a remnant of civilization.

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This week

In an essay criticizing meal replacement drinks, I found evidence of we are abandoning our physical needs, a phenomenon the author calls “forgetting of the body.” (Diehl, 2018)

Soylent’s marketing pitch is that three meals a day with just one drink will cover all of the day’s nutritional needs. The founder of the product tried to drink only this product for 30 days. Then he emphasized it helps him devote more energy to math, art, music, these spiritual and tasteful pursuits. And give examples of how eating real food is a waste of time and money.

My mental performance is also higher. My inbox and to-do list quickly emptied. I ‘get’ new concepts in my reading faster than before and can read my textbooks twice as long without mental fatigue. I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process. Mathematical notation that used to look obtuse is now beautiful. My working memory is noticeably better. I can grasp larger software projects and longer and more complex scientific papers more effectively. My awareness is higher. I find music more enjoyable. I notice beauty and art around me that I never did before. The people around me seem sluggish. There are fewer ‘ums’ and pauses in my spoken sentences.

How I Stopped Eating Food
by rob

This terrifying idea leads me to a conjecture. When everyone eats the same compressed food, it may only lead to a future of being a working component like ants.

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Also, I saw a report that interviewed people who eat the same food every day. Most people who eat the same food repeatedly expressed that they are busy with work and want to save time and energy for more important things (news).

According to these, I simply drew a cuisine evolution chart. Look at this trend more visually.

Maybe they all think that eating is a low-level need that can be sacrificed to some extent. They don’t want to give in to their physical instincts. They just want to satisfy their physical needs so they can move on to more important things. These ideas are derived from the alienation of nature, the loss of the awe of nature. Basic needs are met so easily that food becomes a less important pursuit.

I ended up drawing some abstract characters whose bodies no longer needed maintenance and were born 100 percent for a civilization with high needs.

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I was inspired by Holly Hendry, who made many sculptures about the inner workings of the body. She believes that light and soft cartoon elements can polish the heavy theme. It will bring tension that makes the audience realize these forbidden words and “chucking them up in the air”.

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Is eating really so that unimportant？ What role does food play in nature and civilization?

The book, Medieval flavor food (2012) says that human beings are still fundamentally influenced by the rhythms of nature. Although humans have learned to use natural elements such as “grain” to make “artificial” bread that does not exist in nature, food production is still based on the existence of raw materials. Even though humans interfere the nature through labor, technology, and knowledge, the harvest is still up to nature. As the Bible says, “What will God give us?” For cooking, Montanari wrote: “bread changes the digestive behavior of wheat (which becomes bread), but also adapts to the realities of nature (wheat contains gluten).”

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It follows that cooking food shows the balance between civilization and nature itself, and cooking is the process of artificially adding order to natural materials.

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I took a closer look at how we collect raw materials from nature, process them, and make them into bread. You can see that the simple formula actually goes through countless treatments of raw materials, which shows the realization of civilization.

Next

1. Appetite is the basic need for human self-identification, social repression of the body, ethical eating, low taste and high taste (the delicacy of French food, the vulgarity of fast food?). “, and so on to witness the clash between nature and civilization.

2. Bread, one of the most representative processed foods, has been used and improved since the Stone Age and is the most widely eaten staple food in the world. Countless cultural references are made to it, bread became synonymous with money or the religious concept. Discover the true relationship between nature and civilization by studying the cooking of “bread”.

Written component 4

How has your original position changed as a result of your further work? 

position in w1：Explore the eating body movement’s symbolic value through iteration for challenging the possibilities using graphic design research in the anthropology discipline.

position after practice: The action of eating can be used as a metaphor, visual symbol, and ultimately produce the political value at the image level, such as ‘animality’ and ‘similarity’.

In the beginning, I thought the action of eating could be used as a visual symbol to symbolize some social phenomena. But how and why can eating symbolize what? I don’t have an accurate understanding.

With the deepening of research, I gradually found should not only study the eating’s body as a symbol in term of semiotics. The particular reason for this is the symbol uses a special sign which has a more complex meaning or spiritual quality. A symbol can obtain such ability mainly through repeated use in the culture (Zhao, 2013). The research on the concept of anthropological ontology led me to study eating itself. Just as the anthropologist Bruno 

 Latour outlines that anthropology provides an entrance to study the present because it precisely took ontology seriously at last, not as a symbolic representation (Kohn, 2015).

According to the development of the concept, the visual experiments always are the cornerstone in the establishment of the final position. These graphic practices give me opportunities to consider visually, such as finding the resemblance between me eating hot dogs and monkeys. Or the eating actions of various characters are similar in the imagery.

Eventually, it causes me to strip off the cultural meaning of the body and turned to concentrate on the biological facts. Our common “animality” and “similarity” are derived from the ape-man ancestors, which are body habits that have been engraved with genes. The position after iteration has more improvement in-depth, and solid evidence.

Where have holes or gaps appeared in your research, and how do you expect to fill them in future work?

In the five weeks of practices, I’m still more concerned about how to investigate eating action through the combination of diverse anthropological theories and graphic design, which regard as the tool itself. There is lacking is a further specific argument for the study of “eating”. How should this “animality” and “similarity” be applied? One example that embodies these two points is the well-known short films ‘Next Floor’ (2008) by Denis Villeneuve, which uses appetite to metaphor the greed of social class. Perhaps I can return to my previous point of comparing class exploitation to “cannibalism”, a cannibalism society we are living in right now. At the same time, it still should start from the physical body level, such as the innate desire to eat meat, hunt, and compete. This can profoundly comprehend the political value of the moving image of “eating” that I pushed to interpret in the entire process.

What existing networks of knowledge do you have access to that could reinforce your practice?

Using illustrations and collages to show the action of eating is always my interest. But when I tried to make an animation before, I got the suggestion about it didn’t use real eating images made it look very mechanical. So how can I keep the organic action and try complex visual effects at the same time is what my work requires to maintain? Making moving image collages base on actual shoot video clips could be a choice. Traditional art like oil painting and sculpture has numerous researches on the performance of body dynamics. The combination between tradition and digital in a collage may bring the opportunity.

How do you want to use the summer break to keep the momentum going in your project?

First, I have an idea of installation design during practice. Making a mirror installation with several fragments to observe the action of eating. The broken lens makes the splitting possible. Maybe a large number of fragmented frames will bring me new inspiration. Secondly, there are many submissions requires at the same time during the semester. The vacation allows me to make more complex collages animation. 

Bibliography

Zhao, Y. (2013) ‘Redefinition of Sign and Semiotics’, CJJC, 35(6), pp. 6-14. Available at: http://cjjc.ruc.edu.cn/CN/abstract/abstract36.shtml (Accessed: 26 May 2021).

Kohn, E. (2015) ‘Anthropology of Ontologies’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 44:311–27, pp. 311-323.

Next Floor (2008) Directed by Villeneuve, D. [Short film]. Canada.

Written Component 3

Modern society has always regarded morality and controlling one’s own desire as a way to divide the primitive animal instinct. There is a binary opposition between nature and civilization. However, no matter using the history or biology perspective, the contemporary despised animal nature has never left us. According to the Darwinian evolution, even if we learn to use tools and have the wisdom to create civilization, we are still primate mammals. The humans who out of the jungle thought society is an important mechanism to eliminate their naturalness, which caused the unique and noble. In fact, the concept of “nature” is artificially shaped. The shadow of ape ancestors exists in all aspects of our habits. This article will focus on the animalistic similarities people are sharing is through eating behavior.

According to the anthropological book by Desmond Morris, no matter how noble things are, there are basic behavior patterns established in the early ape period (Morris, 1969). Even if the culture has brought us a variety of dining habits, it has an inseparable relationship with the ape at the beginning of the evolution when disassembled the eating behavior. It’s a natural selection over hundred years of heredity which becomes our biological feature. For instance, first, carnivores will eat a lot in a long interval. Most of us have special formal mealtime and only a few cases show eating more than four to five times a day. This is different from the herbivores who eat freely and eat whatever they find and eat in a whole day; Second, the food heating shows the simulate to “temperature of freshly killed prey”. The food seasoning shows the rich taste system as primates have; Third, the preference for sweets engrave in humans gene is since naturally available ripen foods are sweeter (Morris, 1969).

On the other hand, appetite is the instinct of survival. It’s like a newborn baby will have a desire to eat before he knows the world. The consumers in the food chain eat the lower prey following the law of nature. Nevertheless, human society gradually considered eating as a more primitive and basic body demand. Whether in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the body is at the lost level. Or in Foer’s book links eating behavior with shame, he believes that the process of eating animals’ bodies also bears a part of our self wants to reject nature(Foer, 2009). The issue of what to eat and how to eat become linked with morality. Gandhi, a well-known vegetarian, said “the most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.”(Tuttle, 2005). Appetite has become an original sin, and the dining table becomes a butchery place. Physical pursuits are inferior to spiritual pursuits, while Carnivorous is barbaric, violent, and animalistic behavior. In the chain supermarkets of modern society, bloody animal limbs are missing, and bodies are processed, exquisite, and artificially packaged into products. On the contrary, those repressions and exclusion of animality form the basis of anthropocentrism. According to Agamben’s books, he claims post-historical people begin to treat animal nature from concealment to governance and finally become pure abandonment (Agamben, 2004). When humans are not biologically defined species, they exist only through the cessation of animality. Therefore, it’s the animal body of human being which can not get rid of is a remnant of civilization？

The distinction between man and animals produce their self-identity. It bases on the exclusion of primitive, chaotic, and irrational elements of nature. At the same time, it also brings the concepts of “animals are inferior to human beings” and a sense of self-superiority. And I hope that by exposing the original sameness of our eating behavior, we can achieve a universal identity and essence, and produce a kind of value that everyone is the same. When the body regards as an artistic language, it emphasizes nature and eliminates culture (Ravetz, 2005). Use vision to capture the eating body movement, and extract the animality code in the action. When arranged and juxtaposed those fragments by montage method, the differences between individuals are finally eliminated and then creating a unified political value.

Morris, D. (1969) ‘Feeding’, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal. London:Jonathan Cape Ltd, pp. 164-173.

Foer, J. (2009) ‘Shame’, Eating Animals. New York: Hachette Book Group, pp. 20-41. Available at: https://b-ok.cc/book/842089/58d19c  (Accessed: 12 May 2021). 

Tuttle, W. (2005) The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. New York: Lantern Books, p 22.

Agamben, G. (2004) ‘Animalization’, in Hamacher, W. (ed.) The Open: Man and Animal. California: Stanford University Press, pp. 5-8., pp. 73-78.

Ravetz, A. (2005) ‘News from Home: Reflections on Fine Art and Anthropology’, in Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (ed.) Visualizing Anthropology. UK: Intellect Books. pp. 69-80.

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Visual Experiment

How to paying attention to the essence of the body and ignoring the external cultural representation? ：

Bring “disintegration“. Breaks the speculation that the audience normally filling the gap in the traditional montage frames that using the usual logic. The general structure dispelled can turn to focus on more essential connotations. Use randomness as a tool to characterize “disintegration”, use a lot of unusual ways to eat.

This coincides with the viewpoint of the visual anthropologist Grimshaw. She claims a way to free from language-based interpretation mode and use the visual dimension to disintegration phenomenon. It can beyond the limitations of inherent human logic and brings the “intelligence of sight”. Because images have codes that are difficult to interpret and can only be communicated with the senses.

So then I tried to zoom in on the part of the body that is eating to see if I could collage the code involved in the action of eating.

 Written component 2

During my practice last week, I found it is inevitable to associate eating with culture and self-awareness. Such as research base on typical communities, races, or countries that have particular eating rituals, ingredients, or recipes. However, the “differences” of characters resolve when I blur the eating images from multiple coordinates and place them together. They are sharing the same action —— eating. This process allowed me to realize not the superficial cultural symbols but their bodies. The similarity made me think that perhaps the biological and cultural functions of the body can be separate (Emmelhainz, 2018).

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The ontology concept in anthropology can use as evidence. Here is my understanding of ontology: This is a chicken. What we should observe is why the chicken exists and why it uses as our food? Should not be why India makes curry chicken, while Thailand has coconut chicken? Are KFC and McDonald’s fried chickens both considered as fried chicken? Why are turkeys and black-bone chickens all under the type of chicken?

In the article Anthropology of Ontologies by Eduardo Kohn (2015), he mentioned a concept named ontological poetics. He cited Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s experimental ethnographic documentary named “Leviathan” (2012), which observes a fishing boat to frame the fishing industry. Cameras are installed at different locations on the ship, disrupting any single human perspective or narrative. The result of this is a disturbing self-disintegration (Khon, 2015). This documentary does not give any storyline and conclusion, only has chaotic and fragmentary records. Compare with the traditional montage, the narrative relies on a causality chain between frames. The Audience will fill the gap between images to coherent the action use their logical thinking. They used to build up these bridges in accordance with the human narrative which could also describe as the conjecture of meaning. Kohn believes dissolves the conceptual structures that connect us, and transforms them into unexpected realities or powers that emerge from the depths, and explores more essential connotations (Kohn, 2015).

This concept also echoes the viewpoint of visual anthropologists Grimshaw and Ravetz, they claim a way to ”dislodges the disembodied linearity of linguistically based models of interpretation”. that is, by using the visual embodied, sensory, and materially fundamental dimensions (Grimshaw and Ravetz, 2005). To beyond the traditional perspective that normally uses people’s inherent logical thinking to limit the possibility of studying eating itself. Using vision or sensory to do the recognition, then may able to obtain what Stafford calls “intelligence of sight“ (Stoller, 1997). It encourages me to understand visual disintegration in an instructive way. The images all share something like the mathematical code that is difficult to interpret (Vermeulen,2015), and restore the perception that human beings originally possessed. No longer pay attention to the performance of the form, or sum up our belief. Rather to reflects on the finally presented atmospheric imagery that is hard to generalize in words and only exists in the visual sense.

As I tried to add the unpredictable randomness, collage the cultural symbols that will appear during eating onto the same figure. The repeated production of random eating figures will no longer allow the audience to imagine. It will disassemble the superficial cultural image when they’re eating will have, and also expresses the political value of “similarity” while paying attention to the body action itself.

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‘I change material by repeating it unchanged. The message is the behavior of the material in response to the frequency of its repetition.’

Peter Roehr (1944-68)

The works of artists Peter Roehr can use as evidence, his practice base on the principle of montage. He organized the infinite repetition to a single image from the commercial advertisement and finally eliminates the original commercial message (Ortuzarprojects, 2018). Overall, visually split the traditional narrative structure and decompose the superficial symbols, could achieve the purpose of observing the object (behavior) itself. And will eventually open a new perspective that let me study the eating action from the human body itself.

Reference

Emmelhainz, I. (2018) ‘Dragging (My) Shadows on a Circle: On Anger, Vulnerability, and Intimacy’, e-flux Journal, #92. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/204505/dragging-my-shadows-on-a-circle-on-anger-vulnerability-and-intimacy/ (Accessed: 10 May 2021).

Kohn, E. (2015) ‘Anthropology of Ontologies’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 44:311–27, pp. 311-323.

Leviathan (2012) Directed by Castaing-Taylor, L. and Paravel, V. [Documentary]. US: Cinema Guild.

Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (2005) Visualizing Anthropology. UK: Intellect Books. pp. 1-6.

Stoller, P., Sensuous Scholarship, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. in Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (2005) Visualizing Anthropology. p6.

Vermeulen, T. (2015) ‘The New “Depthiness”’, e-flux Journal, #61. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/61/61000/the-new-depthiness/ (Accessed: 10 May 2021).

Ortuzarprojects (2018) PETER ROEHR: WHERE YOUR DRIVING TAKES A TURN FOR THE BEST. Available at: https://www.ortuzarprojects.com/exhibitions/peter-roehr?view=slider (Accessed: 10 May 2021). 

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Visual Experiment

While philosophy as a field was totally dependent on the concept of modernity, it appeared to me that anthropology could be an entry into the contemporary: precisely because it took ontology seriously at last. Not as a symbolic representation. Not as those beliefs left on the wrong side of the modernizing frontier. But as a life and death struggle to have the right to stand in one’s own time and place.

–Bruno Latour (2014b), “Anthropology at the time of the Anthropocene”

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Ethnography， isn’t only a research method but also a process and result of cultural display. Ethnography often refers to words or images that describe the culture of a community. It uses field research to provide descriptive research on human society.

Visual ethnography is one of the types of analysis: ethnographic research that can be combined with photography, video, or hypermedia.

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So when talking about eating, there is always a connection with food culture. Always symbolizes your identity and community. Food Plays a unique role in defining self-profile. Just like this iconic work by, Zina Saro-Wiwa’s work “Table Manners” (2014-2016). It explores the political implications of the Epicurean community from West Africa and emphasizes performance related to food consumption. She said these videos are essential for others to understand them.

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Based on the opinions from last week, I connected the “eating” images from more cultures, ages, and places through montages.

See if I can use the visual ethnography method to carry out research.

But when I gradually reduced the quality of the images, it blurred the “differences” between the characters in the video. It retained their similarities, they are all eating. The process allowed me to realize their own bodies, not the superficial cultural symbols.

This made me think that perhaps the biological function and cultural function of the body are separable (Emmelhainz, 2018).

As I put these vague eating images together, the similarity becomes more obvious.

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In the article Anthropology of Ontologies by Eduardo Kohn (2015), he mentioned a concept named ontological poetics. He cited Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s experimental ethnographic documentary named “Leviathan” (2012), which observed a fishing boat without a specific storyline.

Cameras are installed at different locations around the boat that disrupting a single human perspective or narrative and result in self-destruction (Kohn, 2015). This work does not give any conclusions. Kohn believes that it dissolves the conceptual structures that connect us together, and transforms to unexpected realities or powers that emerge from the depths, and explores more essential connotations (Kohn, 2015).

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I think this disintegration is instructive, and at the same time, this theory reminds me of dress-up games. No matter how the outside is replaced, the inside is the same.

Next Week

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Using the Visual Anthropology method to research city life in London. It is a very diverse and inclusive city, and these qualities are reflecting in the food. I found the restaurant that within 2 miles of Oxford St, there are nearly 30 different cuisines. eg: Chinese, French, Italian, Indian, Greek, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and even vegetarian restaurant.

Making a visual system that can randomly put small iconic accessories from different cuisine to the same body, like putting chopsticks or fork. Then create multiple different figures. Let them doing the eating action together to show the “similarity” as the political value while breaking down the outside culture symbolism forms.

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