Table Vivant

Edible Crafts is a speculative design experiment exploring how the combination of food, craft and science can lead to resilient models for design. ECR looks at fully consumable, closed-loop design using edible and compostable materials sourced from local ecosystems.The experiment focuses on the table setting in the domestic space. Informed by culinary traditions, rituals of eating and the landscape, ECR designs a complete dining experience using a limited number of shared ingredients. In Table Vivant monomaterial design concepts based on food source are explored to design edible tableware for a table landscape that includes food, textiles, and edible solar cells (Temporary photoElectric Digestopians), all produced with locally sourced ingredients. The table landscape serves as a medium to communicate principles of resilience and interdependency.

Edible Crafts (Table Vivant) is one of the five case studies in //The Resilients// project: Resilients are people of all ages preparing for uncertain futures by experimenting with resilient forms of living and working as a form of artistic practice. The EU-supported project collects, creates, shares and supports these emergent practices, while grounding them in historic cultural roots.

The case studies are public experiments with materials, media and technologies in the context of endangered crafts, urban gardening, sustainable forestry, contemporary pilgrimage, and future preparedness. A programme of residencies, apprenticeships, workshops, gatherings and publications will allow a wide involvement of practitioners and enthusiasts across Europe and beyond.

In Table Vivant, monomaterial design concepts based on food source are explored to design edible tableware for a table landscape that includes food, textiles, tableware & dye sensitized and edible solar cells (Temporary photoElectric Digestopians). The table landscape will serve as a medium to communicate principles of resilience and interdependency.

The project has 2 complementary goals:

– to explore how food generates both calorific (Joules) & electrical energy (Watts) & how this parallel can be taken into account when evaluating ecosystems.

– to learn from traditional crafts, biology, biomimicry & food science to design environmentally resilient cultural experiences.

The starting point are plants with properties suitable for making food, textiles & solar cells (e.g berries). Local ethno-culinary traditions, biological & ecological context of the chosen plant is studied and a scenario for an ‘edible’ dining environment is designed. The experiment should be transferrable to different localities in Europe.

The final work was shown at the “Hotel Resilients” Group exhibition: Ten rooms at the second floor of a vintage hotel with a mixture of installation and performance that prototype possible futures as artistic explorations in living and working environments. Impressions on Flickr

Also see:

– Photographic documentation on Flickr

– the Resilients online publication

Table Vivant is by the hands of Carole Collet (MA Textile Futures Course, CSM) and Bartaku with the help of the Future Textiles CSM colleagues and students.

Resilients is a project by FoAM Brussels in collaboration with Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. The project started in June 2011 and ended on March 23rd 2013 > http://fo.am/resilients/