Towards edible interfaces:designing interactions with food

Food provides humans with some of the most universal and rich sensory experiences possible. For a long time technology was unable to recreate such experiences but now new innovations are changing that. Using the novel manufacturing technology of 3D printed food, I am developing ‘Edible Interfaces’. My research uses a user-centered research approach to focus on food as material for interactive experience in HCI. This will lead to development of Edible Interfaces that are built on the understanding and application of the experiential affordances of food. Designing with food allows the creation of forms of experience not possible through traditional interfaces. My studies so far have explored the perceptions of 3D printed food and potentials for food to advance affective computing. This knowledge is broadening on-going work in the field of multi-sensory HCI and delivering a new perspective on how we design for experience

"Now he walks and walks, as if he didn't have a home where he could eat": food, healing, and hunger in Quechua narratives of madness

In the Quechua-speaking peasant communities of southern Peru, mental disorder is understood less as individualized pathology and more as a disturbance in family and social relationships. For many Andeans, food and feeding are ontologically fundamental to such relationships. This paper uses data from interviews and participant observation in a rural province of Cuzco to explore the significance of food and hunger in local discussions of madness. Carers’ narratives, explanatory models, and theories of healing all draw heavily from idioms of food sharing and consumption in making sense of affliction, and these concepts structure understandings of madness that differ significantly from those assumed by formal mental health services. Greater awareness of the salience of these themes could strengthen the input of psychiatric and psychological care with this population and enhance knowledge of the alternative treatments that they use. Moreover, this case provides lessons for the global mental health movement on the importance of openness to the ways in which indigenous cultures may construct health, madness, and sociality. Such local meanings should be considered by mental health workers delivering services in order to provide care that can adjust to the alternative ontologies of sufferers and carers

“At ‘Amen Meals’ It’s Me and God” Religion and Gender: A New Jewish Women’s Ritual

New ritual practices performed by Jewish women can serve as test cases for an examination of the phenomenon of the creation of religious rituals by women. These food-related rituals, which have been termed ‘‘amen meals’’ were developed in Israel beginning in the year 2000 and subsequently spread to Jewish women in Europe and the United States. This study employs a qualitative-ethnographic methodology grounded in participant-observation and in-depth interviews to describe these nonobligatory, extra-halakhic rituals. What makes these rituals stand out is the women’s sense that through these rituals they experience a direct con- nection to God and, thus, can change reality, i.e., bring about jobs, marriages, children, health, and salvation for friends and loved ones. The ‘‘amen’’ rituals also create an open, inclusive woman’s space imbued with strong spiritual–emotional energies that counter the women’s religious marginality. Finally, the purposes and functions of these rituals, including identity building and displays of cultural capital, are considered within a theoretical framework that views ‘‘doing gender’’ and ‘‘doing religion’’ as an integrated experience

Representations

Representations -- Hiding Gender and Race / Alice P. Julier -- Indian Spices across the Black Waters / Sharmila Sen -- The Border as Barrier and Bridge: Food, Gender, and Ethnicity in the San Luis Valley of Colorado / CArole M. Counihan

Alimentaçao e codificacao social. Mulheres, cozinha e estatuto

This article is grounded on a long-term fieldwork carried out in rural India (Gujarat) with a group of Dalit women (the term for which are designated the "old" untouchables of India) and, by extension, with women from other social groups. I intend to analyze how food production, distribution, and cooking operate both as a form of segregation and of women's assertion of power, particularly in situations related to fertility.by Rosa Maria Pere