Information
Pat Badani >
»Comestiblemealplan-Weave«, 2019 - 2020
Co-Workers & Funding:
Muyeol Choe (Assistant 3D animator)Uma Oswald (Glitch Assistant)
http://www.patbadani.net/pro_Comestiblemealplan-Weave_1.html
Technology
Software
OxED hex editor based on the Cocoa framework (for Mac)Adobe Photoshop
Autodesk Maya 3D Computer Animation
Descriptions & Essays
Pat Badani 20-07-2020
https://projects.cah.ucf.edu/mediaartsexhibits/uncontinuity/Badani/badani.html
Pat Badani: Comestiblemealplan-Weave, 20-07-2020, in: Archive of Digital Art https://projects.cah.ucf.edu/mediaartsexhibits/uncontinuity/Badani/badani.html
Pat Badani 20-07-2020
Comestible, a multi-part project that I develop since 2010, considers the individual and the mass produced in American diets to enter the bigger debate about money, hope, experience, and ideas related to self-improvement and a better life. Vegetables, fruits, and industrial foodstuffs are recast into an ecosystem that explores “dietic utopias/dystopias” and its complex systems marked by anxieties about production, consumption and value. The projects allow me to examine paradigm shifts associated with different visions of a “better life”, dissect problematic global perspectives dominated by economics and endless growth, and speculate on possible futures.
I am interested in what happens to media as it is subjected to various electronic processes. With this in mind, selected digital images of industrialized foodstuffs from my “Comestible” archive were subjected to digital processes producing glitches. The back-end code driving the digital images of foodstuffs were ‘hacked’ using texts from literary sources ranging from “Paradise Lost” by John Milton (1667) to “The Edible Woman” by Margaret Atwood (1969). In a re-codification process, I erased existing code and introduced literary texts that highlight the transformative role of women in sensing nature through food cultivation, distribution, and consumption -- and the pursuit of the ‘good-life’ as defined by different ideologies and the rules that help them function. For example, in “Paradise Lost”–¬where Milton can be seen as attempting to make sense of a fallen world– the role of food reflects Eve's power in the epic story. In “The Edible Woman”, Atwood can be seen as exploring gender equity through food and diets that are dictated by, or that resist, a consumer-oriented society.
The glitched images spawned two new works: “Comestiblemealplan-Weave” an animation and “@Comestiblemealplan” a participatory Instagram archive.
In “Comestiblemealplan-Weave”, the glitched images were compiled into one checkered file, and using 3D animation software, the file took the form of an animated drapery that seemingly blows in the wind. The animation embodies flexibility and adaptability, while remaining anchored and returning to center.
In “@Comestiblemealplan”, I examine gender narratives of dominance, subjugation, and transformation; specifically, Instagram’s voracious circulation and consumption of food images that become instantaneously obsolete and memorialized in digital archives. Wanting to interrupt the decline brought about by commodification of community life that characterizes contemporary social media networks, my glitched food images are given vertiginous visibility in the project’s Instagram feed, parasitically infiltrating numerous other hash-tagged feeds. Paradoxically, these are instantaneously rendered invisible by boundless accumulation – ultimately questioning their ontology.
Pat Badani: Comestiblemealplan-Weave, 20-07-2020, in: Archive of Digital Art Comestible, a multi-part project that I develop since 2010, considers the individual and the mass produced in American diets to enter the bigger debate about money, hope, experience, and ideas related to self-improvement and a better life. Vegetables, fruits, and industrial foodstuffs are recast into an ecosystem that explores “dietic utopias/dystopias” and its complex systems marked by anxieties about production, consumption and value. The projects allow me to examine paradigm shifts associated with different visions of a “better life”, dissect problematic global perspectives dominated by economics and endless growth, and speculate on possible futures.
I am interested in what happens to media as it is subjected to various electronic processes. With this in mind, selected digital images of industrialized foodstuffs from my “Comestible” archive were subjected to digital processes producing glitches. The back-end code driving the digital images of foodstuffs were ‘hacked’ using texts from literary sources ranging from “Paradise Lost” by John Milton (1667) to “The Edible Woman” by Margaret Atwood (1969). In a re-codification process, I erased existing code and introduced literary texts that highlight the transformative role of women in sensing nature through food cultivation, distribution, and consumption -- and the pursuit of the ‘good-life’ as defined by different ideologies and the rules that help them function. For example, in “Paradise Lost”–¬where Milton can be seen as attempting to make sense of a fallen world– the role of food reflects Eve's power in the epic story. In “The Edible Woman”, Atwood can be seen as exploring gender equity through food and diets that are dictated by, or that resist, a consumer-oriented society.
The glitched images spawned two new works: “Comestiblemealplan-Weave” an animation and “@Comestiblemealplan” a participatory Instagram archive.
In “Comestiblemealplan-Weave”, the glitched images were compiled into one checkered file, and using 3D animation software, the file took the form of an animated drapery that seemingly blows in the wind. The animation embodies flexibility and adaptability, while remaining anchored and returning to center.
In “@Comestiblemealplan”, I examine gender narratives of dominance, subjugation, and transformation; specifically, Instagram’s voracious circulation and consumption of food images that become instantaneously obsolete and memorialized in digital archives. Wanting to interrupt the decline brought about by commodification of community life that characterizes contemporary social media networks, my glitched food images are given vertiginous visibility in the project’s Instagram feed, parasitically infiltrating numerous other hash-tagged feeds. Paradoxically, these are instantaneously rendered invisible by boundless accumulation – ultimately questioning their ontology.
Literature
Exhibitions & Events