The Food Pixel Project
- A playful, low-fi approach to creating culinary NFT's -
During 2021 we observed unfold the social obsession with the pixel as everything leaned towards digital.
And from there — directly, aggressively, and inevitably — towards the newly-popular digital format of the infamous "NFT."
As a conceptual food artist, I live in the realm of craft, organic material, and human intuition that differentiates between the real and the digital. I approach my work with sincere love and endless curiosity for the natural world of elements that are alive and dynamic.
Although most certainly not my forte, the mass digitalization was inevitable.
Since there was no escape, I chose to lean in, play and explore.
The result is a 5-part series of Food Pixel Illustrations; a playful, low-fi approach to culinary creating NFT’s.
Each illustration is based on a well-known food staple:
SUSHI ROLL / FRIED EGG / PANCAKE STACK / PIZZA SLICE / CHEESE WEDGE
These iconic foods were then broken down into numbered, individual ingredientes, forming a type of Food Pixel Paint-By-Number diagram.
SUSHI ROLL
1) Rice, short grain, 2) Rice, long grain, 3) Smoked salmon, wild caught, 4) Smoked salmon, conventional, 5) Cucumber, inside seeds, 6) Cucumber, peeled outer layer), 7) Nori, organic toasted, 8) Nori, conventional toasted.
1) Egg white, lightly cooked, 2) Egg white, heavily cooked, 3) Egg yolk, conventional hard boiled, 4) Egg yolk, organic hard boiled, 5) Egg yolk, organic soft boiled, 6) Egg shell, light brown crushed, 7) Egg shell, dark brown crushed.
PANCAKE STACK
1) Sugar, white conventional, 2) Butter, unsalted whipped, 3) Egg yolk, organic cooked, 4) Pancake face, lightly browned, 5) Sugar, brown organic, 6) Pancake face, deeply browned, 7) Maple syrup, robust flavor.
PIZZA SLICE
1) Cheese, provolone, 2) Cheese, aged parmesan, 3) Bread dough, 4) Bread, lightly toasted, 5) Bread, deeply toasted, 6) Pepperoni, sliced, 7) Tomato sauce, 8) Green pepper, inside, 9) Green pepper, outside.
CHEESE WEDGE
1) American, 2) Swiss, 3) Grana padano, 4) Reggiano, 5) Smoked cheddar, 6) Smoked gouda.
PIXEL ILLUSTRATION DESIGN
I commissioned the digital artist Alvarez Ortega Bianchi to collaborate on the pixel illustrations. Our main challenge was to find the perfect scale. I wanted the illustrations to be, when viewed up close, a confusing wash of color and ingredients. Then, as you pull away, the ingredient pixels slowly congeal to reveal a larger “food”.
We went through many test and iterations to find the perfect proportion, scale, and pixel count to achieve the poignant balance between confusion and clarity. With just a few precise colors and squares, suddenly, you understand.
INITIAL SKETCHES
PRODUCTION PROCESS
For the craft creation of the Food Pixel artworks, I included long-time friend and colleague Dwight Esclimann. A kindred soul with shared sensitivity to detail, color hues, grids and proportions (please see his amazing ONE DAY project).
I love working with Dwight. He never rushes, never fills the silence unnecessarily; his observations are precise and constructive.
He brought along his faithful assistant Gean Yip, who was essentially anything and everything at all times.
When you abstractly consider the idea of a 336-food-pixel artwork, it seems OK, doable. When you start to make a 336-food-pixel artwork out of real food ingredients, it’s surprisingly overwhelming. I will always be grateful for my bright-eyed blindness toward scale and complexity, knowing that when I see a dream I have to choice but to make it reality, no matter how many pixels get in the way.
Sushi Pixel Testing
I purchased a wide variety of possible pixel ingredients for each iconic food. I made a 6cm x 6cm “pixel” square of each ingredient expression to be photographed and isolated individually. After creating our “pixels”, we moved onto the large-scale food pixel builds: the Fried Egg and the Sushi Roll. We dedicated 1 day to each large-scale build, knowing that the use of real food ingredients dramatically shortens the artwork lifespan.
I cooked, cut, aligned, trimmed, replaced and combined until our builds came together in the most big and beautiful way, all captured through a time-lapse overhead camera.
2. SUSHI ROLL
Pixel Testing
1. FRIED EGG
Pixel Testing
3. PANCAKE STACK
Pixel Testing
4. PIZZA SLICE
Pixel Testing
5. CHEESE WEDGE
Pixel Testing
EDITION
After wrapping the shoot, Dwight generously created smart pixel files for each iconic food. These files made it possible for us to insert different pixel options and have them automatically appear throughout the illustration. Like a hyper-fast digital paint-by-number. This painstaking process allowed us marvelous freedom to test our different pixel ingredient options and choose those best suited the overall illustration.
Throughout this process we were continually surprised. A seemingly subtle texture, when spread across hundreds of pixels, becomes an entirely distracting pattern. I light additional toast on your bread makes or breaks the illustration’s visual legibility.
Once we defined each pixel ingredient, we retouched the individual pixels to emphasize their tone, texture, and natural personality. Thanks to Dwight’s labour of love on the smart pixel files, and so many shared zoom hours later, we landed on our final Food Pixel Illustration family.
SUBLIMATION
We worked for days on end in my upstate New York artist loft, an old converted factory building that was my giant pandemic cube of experience. I lived on the top floor — half my roof was a skylight and the rooftop looked out onto the Catskill mountains.
To be perfectly sincere, aside from the mountain skyline and access to an out-of-tune piano, I hated living there. I was like a caged animal pacing the enormous room/space until the bitter cold would lift and the pandemic as well. As I paced I conjured up ideas and expressions, new ways to sublimate experience into conceptual art, collaboration, and visual experience.
Thus was born The Food Pixel Project.
Then, per usual, I fell in love with my project.
I fell in love with the already-super-hyped pixel, which I had never given much attention to before.
I fell in love with the perfect scale, teetering on the border of confusion and clarity.
I fell in love with the bajillion acetate squares all over my loft; with the different hues of egg yolk and the feeling of delicate shell breaking in my hand. I fell in love with the cloudy inside membrane of green peppers and the sparkle of baking sugar; with the unique grain of reggiano that looks like shifting tectonic plates.
I fell in love with the morning light that streamed over my giant black and white pixel printouts. With fussing over my colleagues’ lunch orders and water consumption. I fell in love with sharing my morning coffee in the company of other curious and generous minds who also create for the simple act of creating.
I soon thereafter left the loft space and rooftop skyline, freshly uncaged and free to fly again. I returned “home” to a place which, until then, I had never fully realized had become my home indeed.
Now I live again primarily in Buenos Aires, though still traveling extensively for work.
I obtained a new space that I've converted into a conceptual art gallery called “the egg”, designed as a place to incubate ideas and flow in the endless ellipsis (natural to the egg shape) of dynamic life and creation.
New premises for processing life together and chance to fall in love with even weirder and wilder projects.
Through something so simple and absurdly minimal like a small, square pixel, I was able to transit, process, express, heal, connect, grow and give.
I suppose I’ll never stop playing with my food...
Love,
ANNA
THANK YOU FOR SO MUCH PATIENCE!
BACKSTAGE
INITIAL REFERENCES
