Lucia TERRENGHI Computing Technologies in the Kitchen: The

LUCIA TERRENGHI Computing Technologies in the Kitchen: The Living Cookbook as a Design for Mindful Cooking Experiences Résumé Abstract Cet article examine la manière dont les outils This article considers how multimedia and informatiques multimédias peuvent venir à l’appui embedded computing technologies can support the de l’apprentissage de la cuisine à la maison, en domestic learning of cooking, thus considering the considérant la famille comme une communauté de family as a community of practice and the cooking pratiques, et le processus de la cuisine comme une process as a sharable activity. Such a vision is activité que l’on peut partager. Nous présenterons exemplified with the Living Cookbook computer l’exemple d’une telle conception par l’intermédiaire appliance: This relies on the video capture and de « l’ustensile de cuisine » Living Cookbook [livre retrieval of family members’ cooking sessions, so as de cuisine vivant]. Celui-ci sert à accéder à des to enable the creation and sharing of personalized, vidéos de sessions de cuisine familiale, afin de multimedia cooking instructions. permettre la création et le partage d’instructions de cuisine personnalisées et multimédias. Families grow and evolve as “communities of generations in the enculturation of domestic activi- practice” (Wenger 2002), relying on their members, ties that include among other things, house cleaning, rituals and artifacts to build, maintain and transfer laundry and cooking. When family members live the community identity through generations. apart from one another—making learning through Domestic foodscapes are shaped by such rituals, observation by being part of the daily rituals artifacts and social interactions. The kitchen has impossible—other forms of media are often used traditionally been populated by a diverse range of to communicate instructions. One might telephone artifacts supporting families in the preparation of home for a recipe or for guidance on a particular food—cooking tools, appliances and cookbooks, all aspect of the cooking process. A food expert from of which contribute to the representation of the ma- outside the family could be contacted for a specific terial culture of a generation and of a society. This recipe or to confirm the consistency of a soup or article considers the implications and potentials of a sauce.1 But while some of the communication integrating computing technology into the kitchen, around cooking—including the exchange of reci- and investigates how such integration can affect pes, especially within households or close social social behaviours around cooking in such a way as networks—is one-to-one in real time, a diversity to enhance mindful food-related experiences. of media ranging from paper sources to websites The transmission of knowledge regarding to smart-phone applications such as Epicurious2 are family practices within the home occurs in large continuously expanding ways of acquiring cooking part through storytelling, performance, observation know-how and food connoisseurship. At the same and regular routines. As David Sutton convincingly time, these new communication and recipe sharing demonstrates in his essay elsewhere in this issue, vehicles establish and reinforce social bonds and adult family members are role models for younger the sense of belonging to a larger community 54 Material Culture Review 70 (Fall 2009) / Revue de la culture matérielle 70 (automne 2009) of practice. Significantly, above and beyond the Despite the fact that home cooking is a time- informative function and value of these media, the honoured practice, without question the home specific properties of each medium have a profound preparation and consumption of the family meal influence on our affective relationship to a recipe has in recent years been subjected to a variety of and, to a larger extent, food and eating itself. In interventions—contributing to an overall reduction turn, these new media have implications for the in family engagement in the domestic cooking way we pass on cooking and eating behaviours. process. Convenience food producers playing on A hand-written recipe, for example, might carry the overworked consumer’s need for efficiency nuances of nostalgia and heritage by virtue of the have generated much of this change. As Ritzer personal touch of its lettering and the personalized (among others) has argued, such incentives have communication between the writer and the reader. generated an “I don’t have time to cook” (2004: Hence recipes warrant consideration as conduits 47) attitude that has had a profound effect on of information and transmitters of family values. family rituals and behaviours with regard to food Sharon L. Jansen, for example, analyzes samples and eating. Saving time has been the rationale, as written by her mother as “exercises in narration, well, for an influx of domestic kitchen technology, description, analysis, even argument … they raise such as food processors and microwaves, inevitably questions about texts and context, about text and reducing the process of cooking to a functional task subtext, about textual authority and textual subver- with an attendant loss of the symbolic, social and sion” (2005: 55-56). cultural meanings associated with food preparation. When, where and what we eat in a commu- From this perspective, technology can be argued to nity is largely a reflection of the values we were serve as a deterrent, at least to some extent, in the exposed to in our families, and by the way food transmission of time-honoured practices and rituals was prepared and consumed at home (Avakian associated with food. 2005; Bell and Valentine 1997; Short 2006; see also On the other hand, as Moisio et al. observe, Richman Kenneally and LeBel in this volume). The homemade food continues to be instrumental in preparation of food for family has a dimension that the construction of family identity and “provides a often goes beyond the basic function of nutrition: metonym for a model of household activities that to cook for another is to symbolically perform an marks intergenerational care-giving, altruism and act of care. Consciously or not, families and com- love as model characteristics” (2004: 379). This be- munities have been known to anchor key elements ing the case, and given the demonstrated centrality of their collective identity on the archiving and of recipes and cookbooks as markers of cultural af- perpetuation of their recipes as a form of tradition. filiation and commemoration, as mentioned above, Responding to such notions, Janet Theophano is it possible to reinforce mindful food experiences interprets cookbooks written by homemakers as by recasting the role of technology and media-based expressions of themselves, as autobiography in artifacts, specifically as conduits for social engage- that they provide ment? As a means of exploring this question, this an accounting of days and tasks, the accumulated essay focuses on the design and evaluation of the wisdom and knowledge that a woman garnered Living Cookbook, a computer appliance developed over the years of her life as wife, mother, daughter, at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in kin, friend, healer, reader, writer, and as an individ- 2006 specifically for sharing recipes in the form of ual. On the pages of these texts she celebrated her multimedia cooking experiences. This author, along successes, documented her own and her children’s with Otmar Hilliges and Andreas Butz developed development, and dreamed about and longed for the appliance. new and different experiences.” (2003: 154) Technology in the Kitchen Anne Bower (1997) sees community cookbooks3 as repositories of shared memory not only because From a design perspective, I argue that the kitchen they contain the recipes of members of the social is a socio-technical environment that is capable group that generated the collection, but also because of accommodating technologies that can augment they document the history of that community, existing cooking activities. Without doubt, the including the history of how the recipe collection nature of the kitchen as a socio-technical environ- itself was assembled. ment has long been demonstrated by the use of ever-evolving material culture such as stoves, Material Culture Review 70 (Fall 2009) / Revue de la culture matérielle 70 (automne 2009) 55 refrigerators and microwaves. In the case of the nologies that seek and encourage self-expression Living Cookbook, however, the innovation is in and creativity on the part of users and, in turn, the employment of digital technology and, more to design technology to support and motivate the specifically, the conceptualization of the kitchen as spending of time for the sake and enjoyment of a site to be addressed through the field of Human- creating and communicating. In this sense, the Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is defined as “a Living Cookbook differs to a significant extent field of research and development, methodology, from related projects, products and approaches theory, and practice, with the objective of design- that strive for task efficiency. In Western kitchens, ing, constructing, and evaluating computer-based most electric appliances have consistently been interactive systems … so that people can use them developed and marketed around a promise of efficiently, effectively, safely, and with satisfaction” decreasing user effort, maximizing the efficiency (Hartson 1998: 103). of certain tasks, or even achieving their complete Arising from the association

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