Matter of taste: Collaborative cooking from afar

London – Designers from Swedish collective PJADAD created a cooking platform, shown during Clerkenwell Design Week 2014, which is controlled remotely by different people communicating only through commands sent to the machine.

Will cooking become a new form of conversation? This was the question designers Christian Isberg, Petter Johansson, Lasse Korsgaard and professional chef Carl Berglöf set out to answer with their phygital platform, which explores the cooking process as a form of communication. They speculate that in the future, cooking may be done remotely via the internet and that the final dish will be a result of collaboration between participants deciding on the taste.

The machine consists of multiple containers and is operated remotely by participants typing in commands to add spices, liquids and other ingredients to the pot placed on a lower level of the machine. These remote commands also regulate the heat and stirring. Each action is recorded by the machine and these are finally printed to provide an archive of the conversation and a recipe for the dish. ‘We wanted to examine if we can create a stimulating dialogue about food through the very process of cooking,’ Johansson tells LS:N Global. ‘It’s a unique collaboration between a professional chef, anonymous participants and us as the creators of the framework.’

For more examples of conceptually created dishes, read our microtrend Neo-tasting Menus.