My concept is to have visitors the gallery butcher chickens, grind meat, shape the ground meat into nuggets, bread and batter them, par-fry them and then vacuum seal them so the visitor can take them home.

 

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Through this project I hope to address and accomplish the following:

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• Involve and expose viewers to the performance aspects of preparing and cooking
• Demystify the complex process of creating a processed food and empower people with the confidence to experiment in the kitchen and be adventurous with ingredients
• Provide an artifact of the experience in the form of a packaged frozen product that could be consumed or live in the viewer’s freezer.  It’s funny to suppose that someone might keep an art piece in their freezer but also could eat it and keep the packaging out on display.  The packaging must be considered as much as the process the participants will engage with.

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Other thoughts:

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• The actual making of nuggets could be behind a curtain or wall such that the viewers only see a final product and then if they consent can step behind the curtain and participate.
• There could be some hint as to what the final product is outside the gallery — for example, an overstated, or oversized example: a giant chicken mcnugget.
• the “costume” and culture must be well established so that participants feel like they are part of a real, existing process and team.  Consider the factory experience.

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Feedback (11.17):

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• separation between people participating and people watching
• who gets to participate vs. who watches
• do they participate in pairs? one person makes it, one person gets the product
• can you just hear it? see suggestions of what’s going on? smell it?
• how do you heighten the experience with artifacts or other additions? to draw out necessary thought and consideration – don’t want them to figure it out right away
• customized, non-directly abstracted artifacts of process (custom coats, hairnets, protect
• How disconnected can I make people feel from the final product? Just cogs in the system
• Branding markets process (Intel) not item — stories — make fun of farm to table
• Anonymity of people doing the process? Block out their faces or what they’re doing?
• How to get ppl to focus on what I want them to focus on**
• Do you need 6 ppl to participate

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Evaluation:

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This project was really about choosing and defining a direction for the next 14+ weeks of planning and building.  I feel like the central idea, allowing viewers to engage in a very controlled process to create chicken nuggets will definitely force them to think about what and how they cook and eat.  I’m happy with the success of this proposal and concept and I’m excited to move on to prototype what it might look like in a gallery setting, starting with actually just having the class make nuggets.  So, overall, a successful project and I’m really excited to move forward and start prototyping what the experience will look like.