“Three States of Hors
d’Oeuvres,” a one-night exhibition-event held on October 7, 2010, was commissioned
by the Lab at Harvard and attracted over 700 guests. It unveiled an entirely
new kind of eating experience that fused both food and space. The exhibit
consisted of four transparent chambers filled with foggy clouds of vaporized food.
Each cloud was characterized by a different color of light as well as a unique
smell and taste: lemon-cardamom (green), barbeque (orange), bonito fish (pink),
or vanilla-maple (blue). Upon arrival, visitors were handed a tray with different
solid and liquid foods, which they consumed while moving through the chambers and
breathing the various clouds. These appetizers were strategically picked in
collaboration with local gastronomists (from an epicurean market called
Savenor’s) in order to produce interesting taste combinations with the food
clouds. What emerged was a spatial form of gastronomy, whereby the space in
which visitors stood mingled and interacted with their eating and drinking
experience.