The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club presents a collection of foods, recipes and stories that point to the varied ways that humans sculpt the planet’s biosphere. In agriculture, sculpting the biosphere and scripting evolution is commonplace. Animal and plant breeders have steered evolution for thousands of years. With a dramatic increase in the human population over the last century, the sum total of decisions that eaters make on a daily basis means that eaters exert increasingly intense selection pressures on the diversity, abundance and distribution of life on the planet.
Every time a food-secure eater chooses to eat one kind of food over another they make a small, downstream, but not insignificant selection pressure that privileges certain genomes to propagate on the planet.
Dessert:
Smog Tasting uses egg foams to harvest air pollution. Smog from different locations can be tasted and compared.
The Smog Tasting project maps air quality by harvesting air from highly polluted areas. Egg foams are up to 90% air, and whipping the eggs causes particulate matter to be trapped in the batter. The batter can be tested for heavy metals and VOCs, compared in a microscope or baked and served as trojan horse sweets.
Designer: The Centre of Genomic Gastronomy
Role: Design and Research Assistant
Bangalore
2011
