First idea (feet)
The Kitchen as Open-Source: Sharing, Community
Recipe Book / Cookbook:
A book of instructions explaining how to prepare and cook various kinds of food. A way to share knowledge, to transmit ways of doing — but also an intergenerational artifact.
- Nandu Jubany. Receptes per compartir en família (Recipes to share with the family): different formats of explaining a recipe
- Yotam Ottolenghi: emotional aspect, experience
- Ferran Adrià. La cocina de la família (The family meal): community, large groups
- Sa cuina des poble de Menorca: variations of a recipe
Language
Language plays a key role in a recipe: it is the narrator guiding us into action. In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett discusses instructions and the challenges of following them, given the lack of feedback between the book and the cook, as well as the difficulty of coordinating words and gestures. The experience level of the cook deeply influences how a recipe is interpreted and executed. He introduces the theme “expressive instructions”.
At the same time, Frank Wilson, in Gesture and the Nature of Language, writes about how bodily movement is the foundation of language, and how “the experiences of touch and pressure give language its directive power.” This raises the question: How should we approach a task, a recipe, an instruction?
Approach
I want to explore this theme through the recipe books of my great-grandmother and grandmother, which my family and I recently received. I intend to analyze the instructions, the typography, and the user experience — and also provide a translation for HfG students, so that this tool can be shared and expanded across different cultures and communities within the school (perhaps for a future kitchen?).
Additionally, I would like to study some of the basic kitchen tools used in these recipes, and perhaps design my own version of one tool, in order to prepare a dish for the Rundgang.