project name.
Hotpot Harvest
role.
concept, research, spatial design
execution.
2020-2021, Taiwan
team.
raumlaborberlin, Ichieh Liu & Group B
institute.
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Children’s Education Centre
島嶼出鍋務 Hotpot Harvest
The island as the storyteller
Info board of harvest ©TFAM
The Hotpot Harvest is an interactive installation made to guide young visitors through a simulated landscape of the island Taiwan to understand the complexity and interconnectivity of everyday nutrition and resources. Six landscapes: the ocean, the river, the mountain, the coastline, the flatlands and the tablelands are mapped out as a travel landscape, each using different entities (taking reference to the common ‘hotpot’ cuisine well known on the island country) as story points to speak of. They will travel through the landscape to harvest their own set of ingredients for their hotpot cuisine and gather insight on the ingredient’s background, daily use, production and interconnected relationship with the environment.
Cooking hotpot station ©TFAM
The cabbage harvest station ©TFAM
The landscape of the exhibition room is exercised as a “playground” for learning, collecting data and knowledge where all involved are asked to travel in their minds while physically moving through the nar-rative setting, going across rivers while making their way across the monkey bars, removing styro-foam blocks to find where coal actually is dug out, balance themselves and their object on the sea-saw to see how much it impacts on environment factors.
Through this exercise and excursion, young visitors develop an understanding and sensitivity to what we put in our mouths, where they come from and what they are doing to our surroundings. The questions of “what to consume? how to consume it? How consuming it influences our earth?” And even if “we really need to consume so much of it?” is put on the table for examination and individual interpretation.
the installation
field research
Shredded wood powder that fills the Space bags where mushrooms grow in
Space bags laid out in the damp and ventilated area for optimal growth
Pig farms of Taoyuan
Collection area of organic food waste, which is processed and turned into pig feed
Cabbage farms of central Taiwan
Chicken egg farms of Taoyuan
creative diagramming
During the pre-research and design period, reference from the pioneering maps of Alexander von Humboldt and ‘brainstorming + illustrating’ were used as methods to assist the search for creatives solutions of the installation.
