Play With Your Food

Presenter(s)

Julianna Wright, Ryan Lavallee, Jamie Young, Dennis Mills

Abstract or Description

Play With Your Food investigates strategies that implement education through art and ameliorating current issues of traditional food practices and how they perpetuate food insecurities. By doing this, a more significant understanding than what currently exists about how to mitigate the environmental impacts of our food can be achieved. As local resource mitigation efforts offer innovative solutions to our deteriorating world, we aim to design and present a functional, vertical, and modularized hydroponic system with a reactive environment that allows plants to ask for help when they need it. Our novel approach to systemized growing incentivizes people with or without agricultural experience to engage with a dynamic interface that simplifies hydroponic processes. Our motivation for the education portion of the exhibition is centered around alternative farming, food miles, and agricultural sustainability. By engaging fellow students on campus through demonstrations of our immersive environment, the interactive exhibition aims to inspire and reeducate people on basic food systems using art to evoke wonder and awe. By conceptualizing food systems and how they encourage food insecurity, we are then allowed to address the scope of our project which is how interactive forms of alternative agriculture may influence the conditions of our existing agricultural sector through education. Our exhibition serves as an interdisciplinary representation of what it means to consider the origins of our food. Human health is negatively impacted by the lack of nutritious food produced in sustainable soils. Rather than transfer information and data about food injustice, the presentation of this project will aim to evoke emotions and foster a sense of empathy that allows the visitor of the installation to reflect on their preconceptions of food and sustainability and draw their conclusions.