ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Comestible^® is a project examining the cultural significance around the seemingly simple act of eating. Using meals that I personally invented as a point of departure, I wrote accompanying recipes that enmesh ideas about the politics of food, food as medicine, fear of food scarcity, and the rising cult of alternative food sources. Comestible^® proposes a speculative Seven-Day Meal Plan -- an unconventional recipe book packaged in a special box that satirizes 'high-end' food brands. Comestible^® packaged recipe books, videos, and graphics are deployed in an installation environment around scheduled performative events addressing the relationship between day-to-day meal rituals and broader concerns encompassing food safety, agricultural practice, and climate change.

The installation:
- Visitors navigate the installation space and encounter scattered shopping carts filled with Comestible^® boxes for sale. They interact with a virtual 'flip-book' to read the Comestible^® Seven-Day Meal Plan recipes, they survey related videos, and participate in performative events.
- They may also choose to purchase a Comestible^® - Seven-Day Meal Plan box and recipe book at the exhibition’s checkout counter. Proceeds from sales go to a non-profit devoted to food and sustainability. In an interesting turn, a project focused on critique through satire develops into an act of genuine philanthropy.

The recipe book:
- Melding together elements ranging from poetry to children’s rhymes to informed psychobabble, the seven day meal plan contains recipes that are food for thought; ironic propositions that depart from culinary instructions typically found in 'how to' cookbooks. Rather, my texts explore current societal trends over 'what we eat' in recipes titled Changing Climate and Your Greens, Water Stress, Liberalized Trade, Poor Consumer, Cultures and Ferments, Adaptation & Balance ... ; and by organizing my recipes under headings found in pharmaceutical products (Ingredients, Directions, Uses, and Warnings), I imply that food is seen as a 'prescription' for health.
- To read the recipes, flip the pages on the 'virtual flip-book' below.

The box:
- I worked with an assistant designer to develop the Comestible^® brand: logo, packaging, supporting visual and identity elements (color, imagery, typography, graphic elements, iconography). This identity was applied to the book, the package/box, as well as exhibition props, for example:
- The enclosure for visitors to interact with the 'flip-book' via an iPad
- The check-out counter to purchase the boxed recipe book
- The performative event booth.

Box texts:
Comestible^® proposes a speculative Seven-Day Meal Plan -- an unconventional recipe book packaged in a special box simulating ‘high-end’ food brands. Conscious of marketing language that populate foodstuff packaging, I wrote texts ironizing the jargon habitually used as propaganda.