Paper short abstract:

Digital technology enters the world of experimentation with food transforming our understanding of 'raw' and 'cooked', where cooks are cultural agents of the digital.

Paper long abstract:

Digital culture shapes our customs and rituals in many ways. Interaction of human and technology in the ecosystem of living and non-living provides two-way channels of communication with plants, objects or food. Experimentation in fablabs has reached the field of food reformulating our understanding on how we process and consume food, introducing 3D-printing and laser-cutting technology creating and serving new narratives attached to each plate. In this paper I provide with an overview on how digital fabrication pushes food design toward new solutions in transcending from 'raw' to 'cooked', creating new meanings.

In 'haute cuisine' food design of printed artifacts of geometric configurations of sugar, and other edible ingredients aims at creating artifacts valued by consumers of the gourmet of the 'haute culture' of the cooked. Customization of nutrients and printing attractive solutions for special needs (like nursery houses) is already present, while experimentation for creating balanced and rationally designed 'edibles' of ingredients of the raw (like worms that seem unattractive in post-industrial societies) transcends them into attractive dishes is in the realm of conscious and 'healthy' food consumption and the broader goal toward 'feeding the planet'. Cooks turn into digital fabricators and code-writers as cultural agents of the digital. Technologies on their way toward democratization enter the 'laboratory' of kitchen, where I draw upon a case study illustrating how kitchen-design integrates the experimental spirit and technology of a fablab in collaboration with fabricator communities and a kitchen-producer.