THE FLAT AGE SOCIETY / POLARITY PARADOX
Harriet Cooper
THE FLAT AGE SOCIETY / POLARITY PARADOX Food & Drink
The Flat Age Society The Flat Age Society
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Issue design by: Harriet Cooper Š 2015 Fashion Communication Northumbria
The Flat Age Society All In Good Waste
Challenging societies perceptions of shelf life, reinvention and rejuvenation take centre stage. Instead of tried and tested, life becomes all about fun, colour, art and celebration. Odds and ends convert into works of art and objects are celebrated and invested in, not discounted and disregarded. There is beauty in everything; often we just can’t see it. Things we would throw away without a seconds thought transition to embrace the joy and humour that can be found in our days. Celebrating the ignored and overlooked, we inject colour and light into an unavoidable and increasing ageless part of life. Average day-to-day waste is replaced by indulgence and humour, brining colour, artistry and resurgence to the forefronts of our mind. For the consumer, food is perfectly portioned. Sold as set menus, meals, lifestyles or a ‘pick and mix’ style, minimizing the chance of wasting foods. All the products will still be sold in their tradition raw, canned or packaged form to be cooked at home, however the quantities will ensure that the perfect amount is purchased, and the minimum quantity is wasted. Cooking for one becomes as simple-a-task as their nuclear family counterparts. Food is sold as packages, tailored to needs, lifestyle, preferences, and nutritional and dietary requirements resulting in a healthier, happier retirement.The movement is all about vivid colours and vibrancy; the flat agers are celebrated for their fresh outlook on life and their sense of adventure.
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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: Celebrating typically discarded food, past the sell by date or inedible can always be reinvented to created beauty and art.
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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: Reinvention is always possible, when something is considered irrelevant it’s developed to take on new dimensions, new functions and new qualities.
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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: Unexpected couplings lead to prosperous endeavours. The freedom of the trend allows the flat agers to explore a huge range of ventures including new skills, travel and food.
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ABOVE: Simplicity is key to the flat age society. Although unusual, clarity and serenity are vital to the trajectory of the trend.
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PREVIOUS PAGE: Waste is celebrated and recreated, mushrooms become statuesque works of art.
ABOVE: Shells and blossom symbolise the reinvention of baby boomers and rejuvenation of the flat age society.
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ABOVE: Spring onions - beauty is there for those who wish to see it.
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ABOVE: Odds and ends are invested in, not discounted and disregarded.
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ABOVE: To minimize waste, food will be sold in perfect portion sizes. Food will beorganised though meal plans, lifestyles and activity levels to ensure the perfect amount of calories, nutrients and fuel for each person.
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ABOVE: With the development of health and the defined move towards natural remedies, food will be tailored to ensure longevity and good health.
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W ABOVE: Unlike ready meals, the trend will consider people’s desire to cook meals, and enjoy freshly preferred and homemade food. The trend remains health conscious without constraining people to a healthy-only diet.
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ABOVE: The perfect portions will ensure that consumers know what they should be eating, while still able to make their own decisions, holding their own ‘free will’, which they have earned.
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PREVIOUS PAGE: Transporting the mundane and wasteful into a thing of beauty, the chance to forge new ideas about waste and consider the splendour it creates.
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ABOVE: The pantone colours for this trend focus on the colourful and the vibrant. The celebration of the flat age society goes hand in had with the vitality of the colour pallet.
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The Polarity Paradox
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Polarity Paradox Ambiguity
Food develops into intrusive and disconcerting connotations. Detached from previous assumptions and expectations of comfort, the industry evolves into different parallels. Soft and malleable feelings are juxtaposed to jagged edges and jarring creations. Food becomes ambiguous, a focus on the senses and interpretation where nothing can be taken literally or from first impressions We focus on the unknown and the uncertain. The complexity and foreign nature of the experience is intensified by the atmosphere and style of presentation. Austerity overtakes complexity leading to a minimal and stark dining experience. The sole focus of the encounter is the food. Revolving around the aim of being encompassed by the experience and transported to a different world. When we spend our days bombarded by imagery, branding, sights, sounds and smells. The mind takes an adverse direction in Ambiguity. Starved of familiarity and the ability to identify the food, the mind and body makes its own decisions. The movement is about the removal of expectations and the quest for fear, emotions and experiences in the extremes. When deprived of the senses such as sight, the body fights to find and interpret the surroundings. Depriving the mind of the ability to immediately identify the food leads to an adverse and unique experience, an extreme that we are not aquatinted with in modern society. Through living in a mundane world, taken up by full time jobs, schedules and commuting we crave the opportunity to find extremes. The pursuit leads us to Ambiquity.
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ABOVE: The previous assumptions of food and dining will be entirely distorted with the Ambiguity trend. Comfort and reassurance will no longer take place in both the food and the dining experience.
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ABOVE: It is unlikely in modern dining that the diner has not come across the food they are consuming before, therefore the way they approach, encounter and view the food will be altered in order to ensure a unique and extreme experience.
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ABOVE: The ties with natural landscapes and theoretically unassuming nature of the trend become jarring and arresting.
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ABOVE: Rough is juxtaposed with smooth to inflame the feeling of unease.
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ABOVE: Foods will not be immediately identifiable, their sinister and unrecognisable appearance evokes unnamed emotions.
ABOVE: Exploring food singularly, discovering new textures with familiar tastes in their natural form or in ways they’re not usually served.
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ABOVE: Mundane and extremely normal things are transported into the odd and surreal through a different vantage point or type of sense deprivation.
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ABOVE: Marbling represents the confusion of the senses and how the mind struggles to grasp the concept of theoretical blindness to the perception of taste.
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ABOVE: Dining will be a much more ridged and precise affair. Set courses and menus and no choice.
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ABOVE: The experience will be incredibly minimal, ensuring that the focus is on the food and all levels of potential comfort and familiarity are removed from the attendees .
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ABOVE: Identifiers will be removed from food products to reduce the connotations and the associations of their expected apperance and taste.
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ABOVE: Robbing the mind of a sense such as sight ensures the increase in the other sense and a hightened sense of emotion, expanding the extreme nature of the experience.
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ABOVE: The pantone colours for this trend focus on Grey scale and muted tones. Instead of colour, the depravity of the senses resonates in the colour pallet.
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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY, IMAGES AND EDITING BY HARRIET COOPER
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