Pizzas made of Locust crust? Cassava flour cakes? Jell-O from the future! Welcome to Hygieia, an immersive dining experience, set in the year 2072. Step into our restaurant and experience
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Children and families can take part in the fun with stories and science activities all about food! Join us each hour for new kid-friendly science experiments and a story time
Ted Talks style brief presentations sharing the speakers’ perspectives on The Future of Food. Join us at the Wells Fargo Stage for these two exciting sessions! 12:30 – 1 p.m.
The Future of Food means being sustainable. Food is at the center of our communities: the way we gather, the way we celebrate, and the way we live. ModLife is
Film starts at 6 p.m. on the Plaza Park Lawn Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities
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.
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.
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?
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.
“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.
The Great Sunflower Project
Visit “The Great Sunflower Project” to learn about how you can participate as a citizen scientist in real research about the health of pollinators, from hummingbirds and bats to bees and flies. These tireless animals are key to our world’s food supply! Plus, find out about our other citizen science kits that you can check out from participating local libraries, and about ways to celebrate Citizen Science Month in April 2020! We’ll have activities for all ages, and while supplies last, we’ll be distributing seeds for the Lemon Queen sunflower, a tall, branching variety that is particularly attractive to bees!
Kitchen/Lab
Epicurean Endocrinology is concerned with how food is gendered and sexed. We use food and cooking to examine the intersections of food systems, endocrine disruptors, corporate influence, and cultural ideology. We investigate and represent how food affects notions of gender and entrenches gender norms, and how corporations, institutions, and entrenched systems influence and alter bodies and hormones. Epicurean Endocrinology exposes and emphasizes the performative similarities and gendered cultural associations between kitchens and laboratories. “Kitchen/Lab” is a mobile performance and workshop space that doubles as a gallery exhibition, with DIY tools for endocrine disruptor detection and extraction.
Party of—
“Party of—” is an interactive performance installation exploring what it means to eat by asking: how do/are you consume/d? At whose expense does consumption happen? Can one avoid being consumed by what one consumes—that is, “becoming what you eat”? What are the structures that uphold oppressive systems of consumption?
Using dance, theatre, and spoken word, the performers will portray consuming, being consumed, and the different actions we all take along that spectrum in order to survive. Anchoring the performance space is a table with several multi-sensory place settings adorned with packaging, scraps of material, photographs, and bottled scents.
Orchestrer la perte/Perpetual Demotion
A machine nourishes its humans. Stardust or cyborg, social or technical, all things feed and are fed. “Orchestrer la perte / Perpetual Demotion,” a shiny feeding robot, perpetuates patterns of nurturing and domination. It is hybrid, a human-food-technology system. People approach it; an attendant sits nearby; a spoon will soon approach a mouth. Will it open? Will the eater submit? Will the robot accept? The human chews, swallows, and processes. Microbes rearrange and stabilize tissue. The machine resets, the cycle repeats. In these movements, bodies gain just as they lose control—eating, determining, and orchestrating their own demotion.
Food Carbon Footprint Index
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.
GastroGrub3d
GastroGrub3d is asking the question: Can combining a novel food production process (3D printing) and a novel food base (powdered insects) take us beyond novelty and create beautiful, nutrient-rich, customizable snacks that meet the diverse dietary needs of the U.S. population? Our current animal-protein food industry is not sustainable for a growing world, but initiating a massive cultural shift away from American food staples will take innovation and creativity. Join us for this technological and culinary adventure with an open mind and an empty stomach!
Manna from Psyche
“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.
