A10: Taste Rave & Drinking Object Design – José Torres

In-class activity:

At-home activity:

 

For the initial segment of this assignment, I opted to sample three foods and beverages I have not experienced before. This choice was made to ensure that my sensory recollection would remain unbiased by past memories. Subsequently, I categorized them based on five criteria: freshness, aroma, flavor, texture, and appearance.

In the second part of the assignment, I drew inspiration from the pipe system in my home, contemplating how I could leverage this funneling concept to decrease the consumption of sweet juice. The following images depict my thought process and a prototype featuring a rhino design.

 

A 10 – Taste

I found this incredible snakefruit, or Salak, or Salacca zalacca. Native to java, this fruit had an incredibly spikey texture that made look as if it was floating. The spikiness seemed to enhance the distinct muskiness of the fruit’s smell  was: musky, sweet, floral, pungent, sacherine, umami with a finish of banana, cinnemon, rose, leather and persimmon.

The outside was hollow, spikey, brittle. The inside of the husk was slimey, oily, fibrous and sticky.

In order to understand the spikiness of the shell, I decided to look at it under a botany microscope

The outside spikes have a mid-ridge that creates a kind of tinny-feeling structure to the spikes.

The inside of the shell was layers of waxy, fibrous material.

 

I drank a cup of green tea and tried to describe the spatial relationship between the taste and smell of the tea as it cooled using the cube method.

 

I tried to eat a delicious almond croissant (and somehow got so hungry that I forgot to photograph it).  This resulted in a drawing to describe how the softness of the bread bridged the crunchiness of the almond and the stickiness of the marzipan.

Finally I tried three weird and not so delicious macrons. One was bacon, one was fig balsamic, and the final was pear passion fruit and elder flower. I would describe all three as gross, and perhaps the least interesting of the experiments i did into taste. Over-all i found the texture across all three identical (of course) and the flavor overpowering. It was also the last of my investigations, and likely I was too tuned in to the details of my tastebuds for such a candy-like cookie!

  

 

I started designing for the taste of coffee…

But I didn’t like the way that the taste analysis visualized. it didn’t really invoke any formal design, so a srated again, with what was once my favourite indulgent drink: Diet Orange Crush.

I used to love this stuff, until I got a horrible stomach virus. Now i can barely handle it. The taste of aspartame when this stuff comes up has scarred me for life.  So I tried to design a vessel that would allow for minimal traumatic barf memory.

         

Spam prevention powered by Akismet