#immersive dining

With my latest prototype I set out to explore a couple of new ideas. The first distills from what I’m talking about above, taking a model of functionality in an object and modifying it to condition new types of behavior surrounding it. The second idea (which relates to the first) is using this object and using it as an interface to illuminate in real time the behavior that was happening around it. Simply put…

Modify the behavior

Map the behavior

The production of this object/experience was very helpful to my process. Beyond just the scope of building a full table and semi-hosting a dinner party (This element of the work was actually really inhibiting for awhile, lot’s of moving pieces), I was able to start putting my ideas into a tangible form and began linking the language from interaction into an analog space surrounding the dining experience. I was explaining after the fact to a classmate that I feel I’ve finally developed a good working knowledge with my chosen medium, which like building a table and hosting a dinner party, was a big hurdle to overcome due to a lack of any experience with these pieces in the past. 

So let’s get into it. For class last Monday I set up a dinner in the studio. There were six place settings. The table was custom built from a whiteboard I found on the street. I CNC’ed the board, affixed an acrylic wall around the edge and sealed it into the white board. The table holds an inch of water in the base and all of the place settings are raised above the water using a pieces of PVC piping. Underneath each place setting are rubber tubes that extend from underneath the table and are connected to syringes filled with food dye. Each place setting has a different color to represent the guest. 

Analog Table Interface Test from Alex Todaro on Vimeo.

As the guests sat down they were instructed to close their ears and I instructed some volunteers holding the syringes to press them each time there corresponding dinner guest spoke. The result is a live mapping of the conversation at the table represented by the color. The more color a dinner guest has around their plate, the more they have spoke at the meal. 

The experience lasted about 15-20 minutes while guests ate a dijon based salad dressing over a bed of romaine lettuce. There was a fair amount of conversation and soon into the experience they realized that the color represented how much they were talking. At the conclusion of the meal some interesting discussion happened around their impressions. 

“I wish there was a color for active listening.” said Rae, one of my classmates who is typically quiet in group settings. The experience for her was a negative one in the fact that color was almost seen as a reward and during her meal she didn’t receive any positive feedback. Other guests commented on the fact that they tried to curb some things they were saying so as to not dominate the conversation. And universally at a certain point the color began to lose meaning. Once enough had been said the most talkative guests had big blobs of color merging into one another.

As we talked more a lot of the guests remarked on how they wished the visualization would go a bit further in recording the dynamic, in essence having a smarter system. How could the table record who was talking to whom? What other attributes of conversation could it visualize and to what degree are these important?

The experience itself reminded me of a quote I recently read. 

“Really interesting relations between people don’t occur in the form of communication, something else happens: a form of challenge, seduction or play which brings more intense things into being. By definition, communication simply brings about a relationship between things already in existence. It doesn’t make things appear.” 

- J.Baudrillard

There was a tension in this design that the group assigned their own meaning to. This was probably the most fascinating part for me. It was never stated that the color represented anything bad, or that talking more then others was inherently bad. It wasn’t even stated that the color was assigned to talking. This ambiguity creates a narrative space for guests to generate on their own. In reference to the quote above it was at this point that something appeared and this is my initial insight into the potential poetics in design. 

“Behavior is a narrative experience arising from the interaction between our desire to act through products and the social and behavioral limitations imposed on us though the conceptual models they impose”

-A.Dunne

Eric my professor also made a good point. Why have outsiders hold the syringe, why couldn’t each guest receive someones else and put control into the hands of one another? I could do this experiment without any instruction and it would be fascinating to see what narrative might emerge from this set-up. With each user becoming producer and co-producer of the outcome an entirely different meaning could surface. It reminds me of blank box products such as Vine or Kickstarter. Give the user tools and basic constraints and see what new languages are created.  

I’m still struggling with the prototype being taken literally. As stated above some of the critique evolved around the idea of visualizing more concrete conversation dynamics with a snapshot at the end to act as take away from the experience. This packaged party-favor at the end of the experience is troubling to me, or at least the thinking behind it. It seems to me that people are uncomfortable with open ended pursuits, and that in this experience particularly there would be something to gain by capturing the moment to meditate on at a different time. I agree there should be some sort of conclusion but this could very well be a punctuated ending versus  a tucked-in, bow-tied take away. 

Lastly this prototype validated the idea of using the dining experience as a framework. There are many behaviors, feedback loops, and incentives in a meal and each of them are ripe for experimenting with.