ZACK: I had been really interested in what was happening with biotechnology, and I was seeing a huge lack of criticality. S: So neither of you had any food system background before this? You come at it from the art perspective?ĬGG: When we met in 2010, Cat had been working on an ice cream van that attempted to make it snow ice cream, and was doing food research with art students in Bangalore, India. While we’re trying to push ideas from an artistic angle, looking at biotech and ecology, high end cuisine is already heading in this direction, so there was an interesting confluence we hadn’t predicted. But they also spend a lot of time looking at the different cultivars of plants, and different sub-species of fish and ecosystems of fisheries. They are interested in terroir and time and place in region of the world. It actually turns out that there IS a lot of crossover, which is really fascinating. But then, about two years ago, we were contacted by Nordic Food Lab (NOMA’s R&D restaurant) and we went over and had dinner with them. a bit facetiously because we thought well, we are artists and don’t have a big relationship with the restaurant or food world. We started joking that NOMA was really just a restaurant that was doing “Genomic Gastronomy” and that they stole our idea. When we started in 2010, there was a big transition in the high-end cuisine world from El Bulli and Fat Duck to NOMA and the Scandinavian approach. was all about chemistry and a reductive approach to food: how do we understand the base chemical elements of food and build up a narrative or event from these chemical constituents? We were really interested in looking at food from the prospective of biology and ecology. The title “Genomic Gastronomy” came from a play on molecular gastronomy, which was (and is still) very popular. SARAH: I would love to start with you description of the Center For Genomic Gastronomy and your mission.ĬGG: Our official description is “An artist-led think tank that examines the biotechnologies and biodiversity of human food systems, ” but we’ve been working on a new way of defining Genomic Gastronomy in the last year, which is “the study of organisms and environments manipulated by human food culture. NOTE: Some sections of the interview have been edited for clarity or accuracy. We finally had a chance to transcribe the interview and even though it is off the cuff, and conversational, we thought that included a good summary of our first four years worth of research. Back in the summer of 2014 we sat down with Sarah Smith from Institute For The Future as part of her research for The Future of Food in 20 Objects.
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