ArtKitchenFerment

“ArtKitchenFerment” is an interactive art environment that engages with the processes, creative results, and byproducts of food fermentation. Part art installation, part interactive workshop, “ArtKitchenFerment” invites participants of all ages to expand their notions of beauty, use, taste, and liveliness in common fermented foods like sauerkraut and kombucha. Put on your apron and participate in a cabbage-dye art demonstration, compose a bacteria-inspired recipe poem, and make a piece of kombucha “leather” jewelry. Cook some books in our fermentation library, or watch an interactive video installation as you ponder the magical microbes that make up our unruly world!

Imagine a late-capitalist dystopian future in which individuals are held personally responsible for the climate crisis. Imagine a future where ubiquitous surveillance of individuals becomes the preferred method for curbing carbon emissions, where non-compliance results in serious penalties. The Food Carbon Footprint Index (FCFI) imagines just that vision of the future. FCFI invites participants to make meal decisions via a web application. The app will calculate each meal’s carbon footprint and index this “score” against other participants. Scores will be broadcasted at Emerge 2020 for public scrutiny and collective shaming and musing.

“Manna From Psyche,” an augmented-reality public art installation by William T. Ayton, depicts the asteroid Psyche, rotating above and showering spectators with the metaphorical fruits of investigating the cosmos. The art is viewable via free iOS and Android apps, as well as printed media and on-site screens. “Manna from Psyche” presents space exploration as food for thought and human nourishment, incorporating Arizona landscape tones, textured with Ayton’s original paintings interpreting local petroglyphs, especially spirals alluding to Fibonacci’s sequence. Connecting technological and natural environments, “Manna From Psyche” offers insight on science, art, and sustenance for human advancement and survival.

Bingo! Food is cooperation is a social practice artwork that explores the cooperative behavior found in kombucha, and an interactive game that encourages us to think about food and food sharing as integral parts of everyday life. Kombucha is just one of many foods containing a multitude of cooperative species; other examples include yogurt, cheese, sourdough bread, and kefir. We see kombucha as a complex system that is heavily reliant on multiple species interacting with each other, which parallels our own experience with food. COOPERATION+FOOD+BINGO! players will interact with strangers, friends, and family and have lively discussions about food, cooperation, and other human behavior.

The Arizona Cancer Evolution Center examines the iconic hot dog and considers all of the things that it means to people. After all, food is not just food; it represents myriad ideas that can be unpacked and investigated. Class, memory, health, disease, ritual, and family can all be explored through the hot dog. Is the hot dog an emblem of Fourth of July picnics? Cancer? Food insecurity? Baseball? This installation invites you to add your own thoughts and ideas. We want to know: what does a hot dog mean to you?

Shared food, shared land is an opportunity to reconnect to the food cultures present on this land. There are traditions that are part of the long history of O’odham people, as well as the traditions of migrant communities. The session will occur 3 times throughout the day and invites participants to engage in a sensorial experience and food exchange, with local food makers (potentially food trucks) and storytellers.

Food security is a global concern, and a cross-species challenge. Even the most successful survival strategies may lose effectiveness in the radically altered environmental conditions of the Anthropocene. For photosynthetic organisms, food security depends on the availability of sunlight, which could be significantly diminished by factors including air pollution and solar radiation management. At Emerge, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats will address these challenges by developing alternative energy sources for Arizona succulents, ranging from wind to nuclear power. A practical exploration of technologies that might benefit plants, his project is also a provocation to rethink our approach to the present environmental crisis.