Experiment 02-08: Make My Salad

In this exercise, I wanted to create a series of recipes that create my food space. Some of these recipes extend beyond listing ingredients to specifying the cutting technique or illustrating the sequence of steps leading up to the cutting.

A recipe is as prescriptive as the author wants it to be. 

As the author, I can be vague and allow the reader to fill all the gaps with their own salad understanding (as Experiment 01 does) or I can introduce more and more specificity until I demand a particular order and sequence to the events, a particular set of cutlery, or a particular way to even hold the knife.

But: Who fills the space left by ambiguity? is it the participant’s set of perspectives and cultural references or is it their invocation of the author’s mind? 

In other words: when I ask you to make a salad - are you trying to interpret what I mean and what I want? And if you do, does that count as co-creation? 

That’s the ultimate question, isn’t it? how can recipes contribute to co-creation? especially when we are far apart.