Is it possible to ever say goodbye to New York City?

The past two weeks, I have been gaining weight from all the brunches, lunches, dinners, coffees, mid-lunches, desserts and other invented rituals as I say “So long!” to New York once again.

This is the sixth time I am leaving a country, so by now, I know the drill. Moving to another country is quite different from moving to another state; it involves immigration papers, customs, another currency, language, and time zone. Life has gotten simpler the more this happens to me. Two years’ worth of stuff have been packed in three boxes and shipped. I don’t accumulate much anymore.

We all have our quirks. For me, it’s saying goodbye—it’s important to say goodbye! It marks the passing of time, of “properly” saying thank you for being a part of my life, whether voluntarily or otherwise. I have had rituals that were very traditional (dining out), adventurous (climbing a mountain and hiding a pepper plant in a castle for my friends to hunt for), and nonexistent (I once just left without notice). All have had different results. For this time, I think I prefer the simple ritual of having a conversation—the last one I will have with them face-to-face for a while.

It’s not just about the ritual, because it’s always good to get together with friends. Each move represents a switch, violently or not, of career directions and personalities. I’ve been a research scientist, a human rights something-or-other, a journalist and an editor, an artist and a poet, and an interaction designer. I’m quite curious (and clueless) as to what will happen to me on this leg of the journey now. And because of the chronic change, usually when I say farewell it does mean the end for most of the people I have known, who will likely never have a reason to reconnect with me ever again, who may at one point shake their heads, wonder, and go back to the anchored desks of their (relatively) stable and mortgaged lives. Sometimes, goodbyes are heartstoppingly lonely.

But they also have their entertaining side. Just what is it with farewells that makes people say the juiciest things to me? I’m quite positive I would never have heard a lot of these “confessionals” otherwise. It’s no wonder that travelers turn into storytellers in one form or another; one by one, the people I leave behind keep spilling their guts out without me having to prompt them. Amidst all the Thai lunches, American breakfasts, Japanese dinners, and English teas, I have been privy to the hidden lives of friends and colleagues alike. The secret identities, the love affairs, the hidden longings are all revealed to me like a discontinuous soap opera or graphic novel. It’s almost like they think of me as a bottle in which they can keep a message, to be tossed into choppy waters and never to be seen again, except maybe for the stranger who will pick it up on the other side of the ocean. Perhaps then I can whisper that secret, and create a legend out of that piece of gossip. Sometimes, I think they want me to.

The stories I have collected over time remain with me, long after the memory of the place has all but vanished. Sometimes, stories are all that I carry.

To say goodbye means to die a little inside, because I feel that I am leaving a part of myself behind in all the people I have met and cared about. And so once more I feel a bit lighter, a bit rootless, a little sad, but indescribably happy that the two years have meant oh so very much.

Is it possible to ever say goodbye to New York City? Nah, I’m sure I’ll see you all very soon.

For everyone I have met in NYC on this round.

Laurie Anderson and The Use of an Artist

May 21, 2012

Art, Design, Journal, Science

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Last May 10th, my class and I finally marched (!) on stage, culminating two years of graduate work here at the MFA program in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts.

Our commencement speaker was the incomparable Laurie Anderson, experimental musician, composer, performance artist, and inventor, among other hats she wears. During her speech, she recounted her time as NASA’s first artist-in-residence and recalled how she was also the last one, after a politician sought to amend a bill making sure no such thing happened in the future. Anderson suggested that really, we should create artist-in-residence positions in institutions such as NASA, Congress, and other such places, which generated applause and laughter from the audience.

Laurie Anderson. Image via The Guardian.

It’s strange to be listening about art when I spent two years studying to be a designer. I have always questioned my artistic leanings, especially coming from a scientific background. I am and will always be immensely grateful for my geeky past (and who am I kidding, present), although from my experience in that world, to want to be in the arts was almost tantamount to self-banishment. Thinking about the past six years out of undergrad—all the cancer lab rotations at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, art school in Spain, the Poetry Brothel in Barcelona—and frankly, I have to ask myself whether I actually have found what I’m looking for in a design program. And to a large extent, I did in interaction design. I always thought it was a way to humanize the sciences and the arts, which thankfully doesn’t always have to translate to something on screen. Two years in a design program have found me to be stubbornly conceptual, not because I wanted to upset my class but because that’s what I came to graduate school for. I think that if I do work for a company, I will probably spend all my waking hours designing apps and websites, and I have all the time in the world to do that.

So what is the use of an artist? After being immersed in interaction design for two years, I think that IxD shares an important thing with the arts—empathy. To be an artist, at least for me, requires me to place myself in different shoes and absorb various identities. The same is true as an interaction designer. Perhaps one thing that has been enormously helpful to be a practicing artist is the familiarity of actually inhabiting a character instead of simply watching people from afar, taking down notes.

To be an artist is to challenge the norm. While it’s wonderful to design apps and websites, it’s not the first thing I turn to when trying to give form to a project. Ironically, I do not own a smartphone, which will probably give most interaction designers a heart attack. No smartphone? What do you do when figuring out a bill, trying to find a place, or bored in a subway? Well, I try to do the algebra by hand, I talk to strangers a lot, and I write and doodle in a sketchbook constantly. It’s not a perfect system but it is a cheaper and more entertaining one. I think that we are more than our gadgets, and I think that an artistic practice allows one to experiment not just with what is, but what could be.

But more importantly, at least for me, artists are always questioning the self. Art will never lose its relevance, particularly in a time that is rife with uncertainty, though as I get older, I think each year in human history is tumultuous and unstable. On a personal scale, art allows for the exploration of selfhood in a manner that is less contained. I suppose that’s why I keep hearing of the banker who finally turned to painting, or the lawyer who is now a musician. As a scientist (I’m still wondering if I can call myself this), there are certain terminologies and protocols I have had to use for the scientific institution to understand where I am coming from. As an interaction designer, I do feel sometimes limited (although “limited” isn’t always a bad thing) by the words I have to use (hello, “user”) and the media by which I practice (wireframes and sticky notes). As an artist, I am moored to no such arbitrary islands; I can easily experiment with musical instruments as much as kitchen appliances and be equally at home with both of them

But enough with all this labeling. As I leave the comforts of school—though my classmates and my teachers alike are betting I’ll go for a PhD eventually—I would like to embrace the hyphen the comes when saying that one is a writer-artist-interaction designer-etc. I sometimes cringe when I’m only referred to as one of these, because to seemingly pledge allegiance to one field may appear as though one is relinquishing all her other interests. And wouldn’t that be such a shame.

Laurie Anderson with a pillow speaker in her mouth

But back to the red landscape of graduation at Radio City Music Hall and the blinding strobe lights. My favorite part of Anderson’s speech was the finale, when she stuffed a pillow speaker in her mouth and proceeded to sing to us for quite a long period of time with a sound that resembled Darth Vader’s voice, waking up even those who were dozing off. Afterwards, the school gave her an honorary doctorate. Lady, I just adore you.

TEDxNewHaven Experience Design: Happiness and the Senses

May 5, 2012

Art, Design, Field Trips, Hearing, Play, Poetry, Science, Sight, Smell, Speaking

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Speaking at my first TEDx conference was a challenge. It was not just because it was a great platform for ideas, but because of the timing, design, and execution needed to pull off four interactive talks in one day.

TEDxNewHaven: The Art and Science of Happiness. Photo by Chris Randall

The theme for TEDxNewHaven was The Art and Science of Happiness. My goal for the talks was two-fold: to engage the audience in something interactive in the course of the day, and to enable them to view their senses as tools by which to achieve happiness. To achieve these, I had to produce 200 “sense kits” that contained physical, non-digital formats of my projects: HugPrints, Rorsketch, Smellbound, and EatPoetry.

Round One. Photo by Liz Danzico

First Talk: Touch

My first talk was about using our sense of touch. I presented HugPrints, my project where I am attempting to hug everyone in the world and getting visual feedback through a specially designed thermochromic vest. I asked volunteers to come up the stage to hug me.

Hugging on stage. Don’t you just love it? Photo by Chris Randall

Afterwards, I asked the rest of the audience to pull out the HugPrints cards in their sense kits, which contained hugging instructions so they can hug each other (if they wished).

Are you getting enough hugs a day? Photo by Chris Randall

Second Talk: Sight

For the second talk, I explained Rorsketch and first engaged the audience in a guessing game of what clouds looked like and then revealed what drawings I made. After doing this project for a while, I wasn’t surprised about how some people were calling out the same things, while other clouds had very different interpretations.

You know what my favorite Pixar movie is! Photo by Ruoxi Yu.

Yes, it’s a dragon! Photo by Chris Randall

I then asked the audience to pull out the blue Rorsketch cards and the Sharpies in their kits, and they drew their own interpretations on the clouds printed on their cards. To encourage them to draw, I did a live drawing session on a big cloud on stage.

Drawing on a cloud. The cloud I sketched on was taken by Nikki Sylianteng. Photo by Liz Danzico

One of my fellow speakers, Nima Tshering, sent me his cloud drawing. (Thanks, Nima!)

A fairy grandma with a baby by Nima Tshering

Third Talk: Smell, Hearing and Taste

I explained two projects for this post-lunch session: Smellbound and EatPoetry. First, I explained the connection between smell and memory and had the audience remove the Smellbound postcard which contained a printed smell. I showed them the book I made, An Olfactory Memoir of Three Cities. Afterwards, I read them After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost while they ate the apple lollipop inside their kits.

“Now please remove another envelope from your kits…” Photo by Chris Randall

Fourth Talk: Happiness and the Senses

For my fourth talk at the end of the conference, I summarized how we can use our senses to be happy. The key points were that we are all equipped with these tools; i.e. we all had the capacity to hug our loved ones, to interpret a cloud, to smell a memory, and to connect poetry with food, and that if we paid more attention to the world around us, it would promote our feelings of well-being and optimism. I also explained my own explorations with happiness by showing submissions from DrawHappy, as well as what I’ve learned from the project so far.

Photo by Liz Danzico

What Worked, and What I Would Do Differently Next Time

All the sleepless nights making sure all 200 kits had the right contents were definitely called for. So much craft and attention were given to every single detail—each postcard had to be sealed in an envelope so people can only view them as instructed, the envelopes had to match the main color of each project’s logo for easy recall, each postcard had to be branded and oriented in a specific direction, each kit had to contain envelopes in a particular order and needed both a Sharpie and a lollipop. Anything less would have taken away from the experience or would have confused people. Doing something onstage so that people can mirror my actions was also important, and getting all the props together also was something I had to keep in mind in addition to the actual slides.

I’ve also been onstage on different occasions and it was interesting to feel these variegations of audience contact. When performing for the Poetry Brothel in Barcelona, I had to inhabit a certain character and, depending on the piece we were doing, had to maintain a certain mystique. When doing poetry readings just as myself, there was a bit of conversation with the audience when I talk about the process of writing, but during the reading of the actual poem, it was just myself and the text. I felt this while reading the Frost poem to the TEDx crowd—the entire hall was dead silent in contrast to all the other times I was up there. (That was quite fun, actually.) But doing a talk that involved not just a Keynote presentation but an actual creative activity was another world altogether—it’s difficult to assess if everyone was enjoying the activity, although what was great about having a particularly open audience such as this one was that they weren’t afraid of trying new things.

For the next time I do something of this nature, I would have a card that had explicit instructions not to use the objects inside the kit unless asked. Although I anticipated this by making sure the envelopes were sealed, I did catch at least one person eating their candy before lunch. (We were running a bit late, and I suppose he was hungry.) One thing about having a sealed and long candy stick was that it affords a long eating session; they wouldn’t have finished it to begin with and they could just put the candy back in the plastic and in the kit. Hard candy was definitely the way to go.

Also, I would have split the third talk (Smellbound and EatPoetry) into two and let each project have its own 10 minutes. Thus, I would have placed EatPoetry for the fourth talk and followed it with a short summary of the senses. When I went up for the last talk and said that “Ok, I’m not going to make you do anything now,” I could swear I felt the disappointment of some people. If the schedule allowed it, giving each project its own time in the spotlight would have allowed the audience to absorb the concept more fully, instead of rushing to the next project right away. I can’t wait until I develop these projects more and more, and see what I will ask people to do the next time.

Finally

I have to say, I love this format of getting the audience to actually do something creative in a talk, instead of me just standing there telling them about myself. Thanks again to the audience for being open to these ideas, my friends and colleagues for helping me pull this off, and to the wonderful team at TEDxNewHaven who worked tireless to make it all happen!

Thanks to Kate Russell and Liz Danzico, my plus two!

The Story of 200 Red Boxes: TEDxNewHaven Sense Kits Production Process

May 1, 2012

Art, Design

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Last Saturday, I gave four talks at TEDxNewHaven: The Art and Science of Happiness, where I engaged the audience in my different interactive projects. The first goal was to get them to play throughout the day and the higher goal was to show them how paying more attention to the world promotes happiness. With the help of friends, I designed and produced 200 sense kits that contained objects that they interacted with at my instructions at different points of the conference.

The kit came in the form of a red box that matched the TEDx logo.

Each kit contained sealed envelopes with postcards containing postcards representing each project — HugPrints (a set of hugging instructions), Rorsketch (a cloud that can be drawn on), Smellbound (a piece of printed smell), and EatPoetry (text from Robert Frost’s After Apple-Picking), together with a mini-Sharpie (for Rorsketch) and a sealed kosher apple-flavored lollipop (for EatPoetry).

HugPrints cards, front and back:

Rorsketch cards, front and back:

Smellbound cards, front and back:

EatPoetry cards, front and back:

Here are all 200 of the kits (Two hundred! Madre mia. The TEDxNewHaven team were nice enough to have picked them up from the studio instead of me lugging all 200 to Connecticut.)

I would never have pulled this off without the help of these amazing people:

For graphic design guidance
Christine Aaron

For kit assembly
Kate Russell
Dan Fan
Desiree Go
Annika Yi-Wang

More about the actual conference and experience design in the next post.

An Olfactory Memoir of Three Cities: Manila, New York, Barcelona

April 25, 2012

Art, Books, Design, Experiments, Memory, Smell

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Due to my fascination with smell and its relationships with memory, I wrote and published a book that contains smells from Manila, New York and Barcelona—three cities I have lived in and have given me a lot of memories.

Each spread contains the memory on the left and the actual smell micro-encapsulated and printed on paper on the right.

Here’s one from Manila:

Burnt rubber
On busy streets
Particularly EDSA
The site of many a revolution
You can smell the worn tires.

Here’s one from New York:

Pumpkin pie
My first ever pumpkin pie was in 2007 on a martial arts retreat.
I remember not just the pie, but the knife lessons. We had a meditation room and went to a cemetery. We broke arrows with our throats.

Here’s one from Barcelona:

Strawberry
A birthday picnic for Harriet, up on Montjuic but closer to the museum. We wrote poems on a green Olivetti typewriter that we decorated with wildflowers.

Here are some people smelling my memories:

More photos up on Flickr.

TEDxNewHaven: The Art and Science of Happiness on April 28th

April 23, 2012

Field Trips, Speaking, Workshops

HugPrints: One Girl’s Quest to Hug Everyone in the World

April 4, 2012

Design, Experiments, Memory, Play, Science, Technology, Touch

3 Comments

Hello. My name is Catherine and I would like to give everyone in the world a hug.

I’m a hugger. I can’t help it. When I see someone I know, I just go for it as a greeting with barely a thought.

There are perfectly good explanations for this. I was raised in the Philippines, land of extremely happy and friendly people. I also grew up with a lot of stuffed animals. I still sleep with a pillow I’ve had with me from the crib—it’s the only material possession that has been with me forever. And dang it, it feels good. Hugging releases oxytocin, the hormone that promotes love and trust. In fact, studies have shown that a lack of human interaction, such as touching, is detrimental to growth and development. Touch ranks up there with food and water as a basic need.

But I do realize that not all people like to hug others. The idea of touching as a greeting is largely cultural, and I’ve had to adapt accordingly, depending on where I’ve lived and whom I was interacting with. In the Philippines, I hugged. In Spain, I kissed (both cheeks). Here in America, I shake hands. It is especially in the latter that I’ve felt that people respond the least positively to hugs. Many people, I’ve observed, have an invisible “wall” that illustrates their personal space. Touch may be considered as an intrusion, an interruption, or a threat. On the other hand, a hug can also be a sign of great physical intimacy that is only reserved for one’s closest family and friends.

I wanted to investigate our perception of touch. Moreover, I want this project to be a personal reminder of being physically connected to people.

Thus comes HugPrints. I designed a thermochromic (temperature-sensitive, color-changing) vest, so that it was possible to see evidence of the hug. The purple fabric temporarily turns to blue when touched. Right after each hug, photos of the front and the back of the vest are taken, showing where I was touched and how warm (literally) the person is. The patterns people intentionally and unintentionally make have been an interesting exploration of human contact.

I also record the ambient temperature of the environment. Hugging people indoors versus outdoors would give different intensities of color change.

I would love to give you (yes, you!) a hug. But hey, I would love it more if you give your loved ones and perhaps that sad-looking stranger next to you one, too! Visit the project site for more details.

Ready? Go!

Illuminated Critters: Creatures of Light at the American Museum of Natural History

April 1, 2012

Design, Exhibitions, Field Trips, Science

2 Comments

A rainy, chilly Saturday and there is only one thing to do: head uptown to one of my happiest, most wonderful place in the world—the American Museum of Natural History.

It was the opening of Creatures of Light, an exhibition that explores bioluminescence—its functions, its mechanisms, the organisms that have it, and how scientists study it.

Just inside, the exhibition greets you with a giant (!) glowing mushroom. Like so:

Creatures of Light opens with a giant glowing mushroom.

Immersive environments will instantly transport you. You can climb into a model of a New Zealand cave with magical looking strands of glowworms. You can pretend you are in a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico with tiny lights following your movement. You can gaze at giant glowing jellyfish from the Pacific Ocean.

Inside the New Zealand cave with glowworms

I love this:

Admittedly, I forget what this is. A worm? A firefly larva? Let me get back to you.

I think my favorite was this gorgeous dinoflagellate model.

A dinoflagellate model at Creatures of Light

You can even participate in the fun; if you tire of watching the fireflies glow, then pretend you are one by trying to match their mating patterns. Check out the interactive of a fluorescent coral wall that you can explore with one of the exhibit’s iPads. There are also live bioluminescent creatures, such as flashlight fish that are so tiny but fascinating to watch. As always, the immersive 3D models and the interactivity are the key strengths of the AMNH. Although packed with a lot of concepts, it was a joy to get through.

This exhibition is especially memorable for me because I helped research for it during my internship with the exhibitions department last summer, cataloging the bioluminescent creatures that were known and helping to explain to some of them the process of bioluminescence, which I studied in university. This is probably why I recognized most of the creatures there. My boss also very nicely allowed me to play somewhat, which led to me making this tiny encyclopedia of bioluminescent animals. We never got to use it, but it was fun, regardless.

On that note, some stills here, back in the day when I had a clay fetish. This was also one of my projects for my prototyping class.

You’ll have time to see the exhibition, as it runs until January 6, 2013. I, however, will likely see it over and over again.

The Daddy Vest: Hugging and Parenthood

March 26, 2012

Design, Experiments, Play, Technology, Touch

Where Verse Becomes Sustenance: Poetry and the Senses

March 25, 2012

Art, Experiments, Hearing, Poetry, Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch

3 Comments

As a poet, I will be among the first to say that poetry can be difficult. It can be abstruse, incomprehensible, and consequently irrelevant to most people. I’ve often felt that this was unfortunate, because I believe that poetry can be very powerful. As Susan Stewart, author of Poetry and the Fate of the Five Senses, wrote:

“Poetry makes tangible, visible, and audible the contours of our shared humanity.”

But what if we had a different gateway to poetry? What if we can explore verses not just through reading text, but through accessing it via an “easier” medium?

This is what is being explored in a project called EatPoetry. It is a dining event where we ask a chef to create a dish out of poems—literally translating the poem into food—so people can readily have an association between the poem and the dish.

Why food? Simply because taste is a sense that is both social and intimate. It might not be easy to have an opinion about a poem, but it is easier to have one about something you are eating. Eating is usually communal and social; thus, the idea of having a conversation around something you are consuming (whether this consumption is through hearing a poem or eating a dish) is an organic process. An event such as EatPoetry also triggers all five senses: the sight, smell, and taste of the food your are eating; the feeling of the texture of the food; the sound of the poetry being read.

This week, I’ve tried a simple experiment where I’ve gathered a group of people to find out their reactions about two different experiences: hearing poetry with and without food. The food were simple supermarket treats, just to see whether this was a concept that was compelling enough for people to enjoy and to find meaningful.

Supermarket treats for prototyping

It was a small group of six people who rated themselves on whether they liked poetry and how much they think they understand it. I had participants who rated themselves as a 1 (the lowest) on how much they liked poetry and how much they think they understood it. I also had participants on the opposite side of the scale; they liked poetry (5) and believed they understood it. One of them wrote poetry herself.

For the poetry alone, here are the poems I read:
1. “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams
2. “After Apple Picking” by Robert Frost
3. “Figs” by D.H. Lawrence (an excerpt)

For the poetry paired with a dish, here are the poems I read and the treats that went with them:
1. “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife” by Michael Ondaatje paired with cinnamon buns
2. “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” by Wallace Stevens paired with mint chocolate chip ice cream
3. “Cake” by Gertrude Stein (from her book Tender Buttons) paired with soft chocolate chip cookies

For both cases, I’ve asked them to recall the poem and write down as many words as they could remember. I’ve also asked them to write anything that came to mind, be it their thoughts about the poem (or in the second case, the dish), or their own poem.

Here is what happened:

Poetry and memory

In general, participants were able to recall most of the poem, or at least the ideas in the poem. “This is Just To Say,” “After Apple- Picking,” “Figs,” and “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife” were visual and concrete poems; you could almost see the scene/s that were being written about. “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”, although visual, used more obscure words, as well as those that had nothing to do with ice cream. “Cake” was the most difficult, as it had a nontraditional syntax and the words didn’t seem to form sentences that “made sense.”

Expectedly, the ones that had the least recall were “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” and “Cake.” What was unexpected, and more interesting, were the comments, original poetry, and drawings that came out of the session:

Part A: Poetry, No Food

1. This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

Sweet, but cold
life it is.

Forgive me, but I’m not sorry.

And they were not far from
reach, these plums,
alive and red, burning
and freezing.
Forgive me, they were
delicious and cold.

Not really asking for forgiveness
Plum metaphor for person? Personality? (sweet yet cold)
Delicate, not long-lasting

Perched on the verge of summer,
I want to work on my thesis.
But thoughts of sweet, cold plums
Keep frolicking in front of my vision
It rather gets in the way
Of writing poems in code.
Doesn’t it?

I ate the strawberries
from the ground
when I was 3,
My mom got mad
at me.

2. After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost

Giving up is easy,
easy to say at least
But you know your heart won’t rest,
until it finds what it’s looking for.

I am done with apple picking now,
There isn’t the time,
To look at the shadows,
Or shadows the time,
Let tomorrows rise,
I let yesterday fall,
For that is all
there is to living small.

Reminds me of the apples
Waiting at home
To be made into apple crumble.

My desk is covered in Apples. Big ones,
Small ones, glistening, cold, smooth
Not unlike ones fresh-picked in Autumn,
But these you cannot eat.

3. Figs by D.H. Lawrence

A secret that each one must unveil,
A different one, for each,
A secret not quite
Revealed in a bite.

If I were to write a
thinly veiled sexual metaphor about fruit
in the form of a poem
I too would probably choose
a fig.

Societies make rules
It says this is good, this is bad.
Rules are objective &
Good/Bad is subjective
If your heart feels differently
break the rules!

Part B: Poetry with Food

1. The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife by Michael Ondaatje paired with cinnamon buns

Sliced cinnamon buns with chocolate sauce

If I were a cinnamon peeler’s wife
my clothes drying in the courtyard
would bring many a wandering man,
back to my carousel; I
talking amidst them in the market
would proclaim, the love in my veins.

Is the cinnamon peeler’s wife a
cinnamon bun?
I feel awkwardly voyeuristic
But it’s so delicious,
I will just eat and eat some more.

World looks you through a lens
And the lens has a name.

2. The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens paired with mint chocolate chip ice cream

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

The emperor of ice cream,
sits on a beam, with mint
chocolate dip and lots of cream.
The only emperor is the
emperor of dreams.

You know what’s colder
and sweeter than
a summer plum?
Mint chocolate chip ice cream
that’s what.

3. Cake by Gertrude Stein (from Tender Buttons) paired with soft baked chocolate chip cookies

Two chocolate chip cookies

Automatic, non stop,
in a way again, come,
these thoughts, flat jab
as a needle in sea, the
sea, that hides, in me.

A tragic baking accident!
It was a little hard to understand
the words as they were
being read. I kept wondering
about homonyms. Maybe some
meaning was lost. I want to read with my eyes, next time.
But the cookies were solid, sweet, and decidedly
non-abstract. I wonder if they helped or
hindered by focus on the poem?

I also got some feedback on the process itself. Was it an enjoyable experience to hear poetry and eat at the same time? Did they like the poems? Did they want other poems to be read next time? Were they able to make associations between the food and the poem? Here are some; highlights are my own.

I don’t know many poems to make suggestions. I probably need to read the poems myself to understand them better. Never “listened” to poetry before. I wish I understood the ice cream poem, because the ice cream I ate was really good.

I enjoyed the poems and the food, except for the cookies. Not sure if I was supposed to establish a correlation between the food and poems, or remember the poems better because of them. Perhaps that’s what you’re testing? I don’t now. Concentrating on the poems to remember them kept me from enjoying the poems—just made me anxious that I wouldn’t remember / test poorly.

I think more physical, sensual poems worked better for this experience. For the fig poem, I really wanted a fig. I’m not a big fan of G. Stein normally, but I could enjoy it if I were held still for a long enough time. For poems like that, I would maybe pair it with a slow-to-eat food, not something you’d wolf down. (A lollipop perhaps?) Her words take time, more so than W.C.W.s poem which is clear-cut and non-abstract. I really enjoyed it! Thanks, C.

Enjoyed this. Ice cream—favorite food. Robert Frost poem was my favorite, best captured a mood and a place. Although the food was delicious, it distracted from understanding the poems. Gertrude Stein—least favorite; embodied everything I dislike about poetry. (Note: This was from the participant who disliked poetry the most.)

The food was overpowering; the first two poems worked the best, mostly because of the length. Food made it difficult to read anything. Gertrude Stein was beautiful sounding words, which is why the words were all I remember. Shorter poems would be the way to go. Loved the concept as an artwork / performance piece.

Some of my conclusions:

1. Participants generally enjoyed the experience, and giving them a way to express themselves after the poem was read was great. It allowed them to express their opinions on the poem, unlike regular poetry readings where the poem was just read, and that was that.

2. Food was a deterrent in recalling the actual text of the poem; having to taste something distracted from trying to understand something being read. While the participants will likely remember what the ate more than the words of the poem.

3. While eating didn’t facilitate the recall of the poems’ text, what it did do was create an association with the poem. For example, while few understood “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” most enjoyed the ice cream served to them. I enjoyed the drawings a lot, particularly because it came from the participant who had a clear dislike for poetry.

4. It would have been better to be as literal about the food as possible. I served cookies for Stein’s “Cake,” mainly as a wild card, and because the words such as “mussed ash,” “two,” “dirty,” recalled something dark and earthy.

As with prototypes, there are some additional questions raised from this session. Should the poems be projected on the wall instead of just read? Should they be read first and then have the food served, since having them together increased the friction in understanding the poem? How can we facilitate the participants’ own creativity, as to me, one of the more interesting results was the marginalia that they scribbled about the experience? More to come, and soon.

—Catherine Sarah Young

Artist for the Planet

See You Soon: A Vagabond’s Goodbye