"A Meat-Summer Night’s Dream"
This immersive dinner is an experimental future prototype and a pilot study of an ongoing speculative biohybrid food future.
What if we could eat biohybrid robots instead of animals?
Imagining sustainable food futures, we present a playful and poetic dining experience through a tangible design fiction set in a 2052 Paris restaurant, where diners consume a biohybrid flying robot as a substitute for the cruel and exclusive French delicacy, the ortolan bunting. We hope to hear diverse perspectives from guests with various backgrounds through role-playing and engaging experiences. This will help us collectively think more broadly and deeply about the topic and design possible futures that we all want to live in.
To enhance participants’ immersive experience, we incorporated elements of tangibility through a dinner-in-the-drama. Reflecting on this staged critical future, participants believed that the proposed technology could become a reality, perceived the biohybrid robots as potentially sentient, and considered understanding our relationship with these animal-robot hybrids to be more important than their potential environmental benefits. Participants also described the experience as incredibly fun, fascinating, mind-blowing, and thought-provoking. We discuss sustainability, ethics, and the philosophy of food and technology.
Standford University
2024 - ongoing
Details
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Stage Direction
In the year 2052, Paris remains a city where history and innovation intertwine. A select group of culturally curious and open-minded individuals gathers in a renowned Parisian venue for an evening that promises to push the boundaries of tradition. These guests, passionate about French culture and eager to explore new horizons, are about to embark on a culinary journey that bridges the old world with the new.
Diner Casting Roles
Each guest will role-play a future version of themselves during this dining experience, with a dedicated discussion mission. The mission is to prompt the group to discuss and gather perspectives on the political, economic, socio-cultural, philosophical, ethical, and environmental impacts of the future scenario and the technology demonstrated at the event.
Setup and Menu
Dishes
We Serve three-course light dinner for our guests.
Salad: A fresh blend of Kale, baby Arugula, Radish, Cherry Tomatoes, Figs, Raspberry, Blueberry, sprinkled with coconut chips, Mayo Dips
Main: Roasted Quail
Dessert: Quail eggs, Butterfly pea flower (blue), Sago, Curacao syrup (blue)
Drinks: Curacao syrup (blue), Sparkling water
Flying Drone & Tech Demo
3D Prototype Demo
The Napkin Ritual
Traditionally, Ortolan is eaten with a napkin draped over the head to enhance the sensory experience and to conceal the act of eating from the eyes of God. At the 'A Meat-Summer Night's Dream' dinner, we preserve this cultural ritual for our guests as they enjoy the synthetic version of Ortolan, respecting the rich heritage behind it.
Group Discussion
Credits
Thank you for all our guest friends join us for the experimental night with food, robot and bio-hybird. We all truly inspired by the enthusiasm and the thought-provoking conversations we had.
Dinner Guests: (from left to right) MetaCher, Brock, Kalyani, Shihan, Ziming, Charlotte, David, Thomas
Concept, Design & Research: Shihan Zhang (alter+), Ziming Wang (Stanford University & Chalmers University of Technology), Qingxiao Zheng (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Chef & Photographer: Ting Zhong
3D Modeling: Yuye Zhang
Sponsor Org: ArtX Gallery
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If bird flies,
blue is sky's.
The project was steeped in the poetic ambiance of the dinner, "A Meat-Summer Night’s Dream." Brock wrote a poem inspired by David, our true poet, and during our interview, the team collaborated with David to create another poem. He taught us a word-by-word game for writing collaborative poetry, which led to the line above.