It Is Not Easy, Being Green by Nick Rebstadt

It Is Not Easy, Being Green Mid-Semester Folio Lifecycle Nick Rebstadt 3281 933

Contents: Perception, Second, Action

Moment, Time, Life Mapping Final Moments

12 18 20

Food Audit

Placed

Taste

Mid-Semester Project 38 Sustenance 38 Initial Ideas 38 Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht 42 Commodification, Sustainable Commodification, Social 44 Commodification, Relation

Perception, Second, Action: What is there is simple: the sugar rises and then falls. There is a tactile experience in the everyday. Something small and fleeting â&#x20AC;&#x201C; fingers scraping Insignificant, Unnoticeable. What happens is the opposite The granules rise

You are deceived

You only have a few seconds to comprehend the information in front of you before it is over. It all happens so quickly that before you realise what is actually happening you assume something else entirely. Such is the information that goes unnoticed in a few seconds, even if we are watching closely. â&#x20AC;&#x192;

Moment, Time, Life: ‘…from smoking a cigar to having sex. They would hang out on camera until the rolls of film ran out… Warhol’s early films dwell in the atmosphere of life cycles set in reel time.’1 What is it to capture a moment in time? The aspect of Duration came to influence my thinking. This brief led me once again into the chasing of the everyday – those fleeting moments that are often overlooked and neglected. I became interested in capturing the moments that expose two different time signatures. I began to obsessively film and photograph windows and light. I saw the window as a kind of threshold between two modes of time, two modes of existence. What goes on outside and what lies within. The effects that light and surfaces have in the result of time passing, light shifting and changing and consequently what we identify as ‘moment’. Time changes, it passes and things change with it. For me it was this threshold. This is what I aimed to capture. The images the I presented to class are two snapshots from train filming’s that I made. They show a series of different modes of time – passing the exterior landscape quickly whilst in the capsule of the train carriage, a different, slower mode of time existed. They were printed on tracing paper and mounted on newsprint to convey their fleeting quality. After all they are 1/25th of a second in the duration of an entire film.

1 Bruno, G. Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts. MIT Press, 2007: p.191

Moment One

Moment Two

Mapping: The mapping was complex and challenging. How does one map time? More specifically, a moment in time and space that could never be completely reconstructed. This was not easy. I settled on a mode of exchange that required a set of different grids on different trajectories on the paper space that began to reconstruct the modes of time that influenced the chosen moments that I had decided to deal with. From there I mapped out fields which covered the different variables that had influenced the construction and experience on the image, such as the sunsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; relationship to the time of day, and the position of my perception and journey through space. The gridded system exposes these ideas. The tighter the grid, the faster time is passing, the more skewed the grid is the more augmented my experience of it has become. From this I had managed to build up a relationship between the different modes of time that related with the moments chosen.

Final Moments: A dialogue between the blurred dynamic, Familiar, yet distant, And the present, Calm, and tranquil Exterior time, Interior time.

After revising my initial concepts of capturing the moment I though about attempting to reconstruct the moment based on the essence of the physics behind it. This design creates a relationship between the blurred dynamic lines of the background captured by the image and the time signature experienced by the viewer using the same reflective technique experienced on the train.

Food Audit: With the food audit, I began by simply documenting what I was eating and the circumstances that I was eating it – pretty much out of curiosity. I spent the first few days passively auditing my eating habits and was shocked at the amount of processed and café foods that I was consuming. Essentially, what I ate was rather unhealthy and most of the time I ate it on the go and by myself – which once again is not the ‘healthiest’ way of consuming food. For the second half of the audit I decided to test exactly how ‘healthily’ I could eat. My aim was simple: eating un-processed foods with low food miles and keeping the way that I ate the food in mind, such as minimal packaging etc. what I quickly found was that it is not easy being green, and that healthy eating was not as simple as it seems. Healthy heating is not a linear problem with a simple and effective solution – that is too idealistic – it is instead a vast network of issues that came to affect the way that I consumed food and even though I gave it a really good attempt, it was not perfect, and it never would be. My audit diagrams responded to this. I created not simply one food pyramid but seven. Each dealt with a different aspect of sustainable eating practices that not just revolved around the food itself, but rather all of the issues that came with it, such as habit, social eating and levels and type of packaging. The aim is to achieve a well-rounded eating habit.

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Part One: Observation Observed Eating Patterns Across Three Days

FIRST THREE DAYS The first part of the week was initially a study of what I was eating, where I was eating it, and the circumstances around why I was eating the way I was.

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I was interested to find out and document my eating trends, as they were - as anyone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s average eating patterns would be. I was interested in the contexts in which I was eating, as this seemed to dictate how and the types of foods that were available for me to eat.

Multiple Hours

Most of the time, I was out, rushed or plain forgot or didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have enough space to make food for myself and thus, purchased it. I am also an habitual coffee drinker.

Les Fa iurely st E ati vs. ng

SECOND THREE DAYS The second part of the audit, I asked how I could make my eating habits more sustainable and a little healthier for both me and the environment.

I decided to cut out processed foods and to consider the food miles that my goods had clocked up.

IT WAS EXTREMELY HARD to cut out processed food completely, in many cases I had to compromise with the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;less-processedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; food types. Most things that are cheap and readily available are processed or have come from far away. Eventually I found greengrocers that stocked local produce and roughly found out what I could and could not eat.

Nutrition

The results show a more wellrounded spectrum, although it was the weekend, which may influence the results. I cut back on coffee.

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Part Two: Modification Consumption Of Unprocessed Foods With

Pr oc es L e v e l s ed

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Placed: Two mirrors. An infinite mound of flour. Identical. In every way. Vague utensil. Encountering the setting is unknown. The performative is revealed. Your subconscious is made uncertain. Eating becomes question. Aim: To create an abstract comment on genetic engineering creating an infinite supply of a staple food â&#x20AC;&#x201C; flour â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and a mutated hybrid utensil. Result: An engagement with the performative aspects of eating, provoking the viewer into thinking about how they consume good through giving them an almost entirely new possibility of consumption. The mirrors reflect your actions, thus provoking you into self-conscious behaviour and thus thinking about the way in which you consume. I liked the result far more than the aim.

Taste: The goal with this project was to create a taste experience using as many processed foods as possible. Initially, I was looking to create something weird as a commentary on food consumption; however, I began to simply play with flavours and appearances and came up with the coffee balls. The idea is that there is an experience from the bitter of the outside, through to the sweet smoothness of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;White Icingâ&#x20AC;? and then to the natural texture and fruity taste of the sultana centre.

Mid-Semester Project: Sustenance: To sustain is to live. The performative and the ritualistic is where I began with this brief essentially, the act of sustaining ourselves. How does or can coffee bring people together? How can I get them to think about what it is that they consume? Initial Ideas: Initially, I was thinking about an open plan space, something that would break down the barriers between the barista/café worker and the idea of coffee as a commodity in a capitalist culture. The designs were based around an open plan table the concept behind this being to facilitate an open forum-type environment in which people could interact. This is where the concepts of slow food infiltrated the design. However, the space was not working out as well as I’d hoped and I decided to move on. I wanted to avoid designing yet another cliché Melbourne café. I needed to look at the problem and issues another way.

Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht: This is the name of a coffee cantata written by Joseph Bach. It was a kind of social commentary on coffee culture in Germany at the time, it translates to ‘Be Still, Stop Chattering’. He wrote it for a friend who ran a local café in Leipzig. The reason why I am using this is because I think that it essentially sums up what I aim to achieve with my design – a cohesive union between Coffee as Commodity and Coffee as cultural artefact in the twenty-first century. My final design uses the way that coffee is both a relational object and primary commodity. Take-away coffee is often consumed alone, it is a ritual in daily life. My design looks at the lifecycle coffee has in terms of sustainable consumption – that is, ‘social eating’. Naturally, the coffee is ethically sourced and Biopak cups are used so as not to negatively damage the environment. Rather than offer an alternative as such, I considered what I as a designer, and the interior as a designed whole could do to integrate a solution based on the current cultural aspects of consumption – essentially marrying sustainable eating practices with consumer capitalist culture.

Commodification Sustainable Commodification Social Commodification Relation The focus bacame about connecting individuals through different ways. I designed a scenario that an individual might encounter within the cafe - one that is based on creating disjointed relationships that are not necessarily based in the site.

Write A Message While You Wait For Your Coffee

Read Somebody Elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Message Left For You Which Has Been Stuck On Your Cup

SCHWEIGT ST (BE STIL

Look Up The QR Code On Your Phone to access the cafe blog.

Look at Links, Conversation & Suggest Recipes Etc.The cycle comes back to the CafĂŠ. A Community is created. 45