Unintelligible Art & Medium Specificity

Each student will choose an artistic medium (film, photography, drawing, painting, dance, performance, graphic design, poetry, literary narrative, etc.) and produce a work which explores the specific elements unique to that medium--like Brakhage or Daren’s films, Pollock’s paintings, Warhol’s prints, Cage’s music, etc. Artist statements should include a discussion of how their particular work functions as a celebration, commentary or critique of their chosen medium.

Commercialized food is about more than food. There is an implicit visual language----expectations for food presentation. We organize the food on plates. When we cast light on our food, the lighting tends to be a certain way. When capturing footage of food, there are traditional stylized camera movements. For my medium specificity assignment, I decided to preserve the visual language of food presentation. This visual language triggers a habitual expectation that the subject will be edible. However, for a twist, I decided to present inedible food. I have all the trappings and signs that would indicate the food will be delicious, but the food itself is made mainly out of trash.

Tangible elements of the visual language included the simple yet welcoming wooden table, the gas lamp (which added a sense of old-fashioned reliability!), the high-contrast dining plates (to show off the food as though it were worth eating!), and the napkins. We use folded napkins to imply order and cleanliness (thereby implying edibility!) In my case, all of these conventional visual elements were ironic and misleading!

I also paid attention to diction. Words and phrases like "generous portion" and "complementary" and "delicious" evoke memories of every commercial you've ever seen.

I have studied food advertisements. I observe they use a particular kind of harsh spotlighting, which brings out glistening highlights in the food. This spotlighting is the equivalent of an eye-light when shooting human portraits. The remainder of the shadows are made less impenetrable using a diffused fill-light. This is all done to reduce bad shadows, while simultaneously adding gloss to the moist parts of food, to make it look fresh.

I used a combination of sweeping camera shots, extreme closeups, and the iconic plate-placement shot. It is a common trope in food advertisements to show a disembodied hand as it places a platter of delicious food onto a table, before retreating back off screen. The plate-placement shot is the conventional way to introduce a new food item, and thus it carries with it the expectation that the food will be worth looking at. However, my extreme closeups (another common advertisement feature) revealed otherwise! The sweeping shots (another conventional advertisement cliché) provided a grace that contrasted ironically with the ugly food items.

Even the music was upbeat and happy, not matching the ugly food whatsoever.

My use of the visual language of commercial food presentation was intended to demonstrate something specific. I wanted the audience to consider: to what extent do we consider food delicious because it is well prepared, and to what extent is our appetite influenced by the triggers contained in the visual language of food presentation? Without the stylized presentation, can good food look unappetizing? With the expected presentation, can bad food look more appetizing? Definitely.

Were I to go back and make corrections, I would do the following:

1. I would change "shredder fresh toppings" to "freshly shredded paper". This alternate wording would be more clearly in line with the trash theme, and would spell out the identity of the topping. In its current state, the only solid clue regarding the identity of the topping is a single closeup shot.

2. Correct visual stutter. During the final shot, there is a visual stutter during the left panning movement between the spaghetti and the cup. This disrupts the stylized flow and makes the entire video noticeably less believable.

3. Better match the visual of the salad with the dialogue, "beginning with a fresh backyard salad". As it is now, the salad is moving off the frame when the narration is describing it. This is confusing, and again disrupts the stylized flow.
4. Delete everything and start over to make it better.