a MATTER of CONVENIENCE

“Pork Dijon Lemon California Laurel Branch.” A dish by chef Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago. Photograph by Eric Rolph at Flickr.

The egghead news feeds that I subscribe to first alerted me to the radical re-arranging of the covalent bonds in food molecules being carried out by chefs in Chicago. I have a sideline interest in thin flexible displays, sometimes called electronic paper, and I have the feeds filtered to rope in any new technologies related to paper. For a couple of years science magazines have been infatuated with the edible paper printed with electronic ink being served by Homaro Cantu at his restaurant, Moto, in Chicago.

This kind of experimentation isn’t new to anyone who’s seriously interested in food. For something like twenty years the Spanish chef Ferran Adria, and his restaurant El Bulli has combined the instinct for surrealism that’s sometimes in the soul of artists of his his country, with a precise and exhaustively documented experimentation into the chemical reactions between foodstuffs.

Late last year he published something of a manifesto in the Guardian in England, co-written with two other chefs known for their dazzling experiments, Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in California and Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck in England, and the Harold McGee who has written extensively on the chemistry of food and cooking.

“We embrace innovation – new ingredients, techniques, appliances, information, and ideas – whenever it can make a real contribution to our cooking. We do not pursue novelty for its own sake. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, dehydration, and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes. Similarly, the disciplines of food chemistry and food technology are valuable sources of information and ideas for all cooks. Even the most straightforward traditional preparation can be strengthened by an understanding of its ingredients and methods, and chemists have been helping cooks for hundreds of years.

There’s a conceptual clarity and sweet strangeness about it all that’s reminiscent of the way that modern architects in the 1920’s and 1930’s — Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier among them — used the most advanced manufacturing techniques and materials to build houses that were essays on a new way of living.  The buildings and food are sensual. “The act of eating engages all the senses as well as the mind” wrote Adria, Keller, Blumenthal and McGee. “Preparing and serving food could therefore be the most complex and comprehensive of the performing arts. To explore the full expressive potential of food and cooking, we collaborate with scientists, from food chemists to psychologists, with artisans and artists (from all walks of the performing arts), architects, designers, industrial engineers.”

The Photography of Soffia Gisladottir

 All photographs by Soffia Gisladottir at Flickr and http://www.soffia.net

Soffia Gisladottir’s photographs seem like something remembered by a grand storyteller, as pure and strong and profound as myths. There’s a stillness and expansiveness in them even when seen at postage stamp size on Flickr. She lives and mostly works in Iceland, a country where ancient stories, and mysterious and magical beliefs permeate the culture. Tools are clearly at work behind the scenes, colouring and enhancing, but they don’t seem to be something artificial. She seems to be re-arranging a view so that it matches what a poet sees when she looks at the world.

 Mixed among photographs of her travels around the world and life in Iceland are stills from music videos and marketing photographs. I asked her if clients hire her for the vision she has and let her “see” the product in their own way.

I believe so, in general I get full control when shooting or designing. My clients often have good ideas that I´m happy to hear about and can work with, anything that can make the outcome as good as possible.

When you’re doing a video rather than a photograph does your perspective change, do you need a narrative? Your work seems quite symbolic, as though you’re interested in mythology.

So far all my music videos have been animated or a stop motion video, taken with my Canon d400. I´m therefor shooting with my camera frame by frame, and I think of every frame as an individual photo. My Coworker Eyglo did make fun of me when I told her that every frame had to be artistically perfect : )

I´m an artist, graduated from Iceland Academy of Arts, with B.A in Fine Arts. And today photography is my media, and I express myself with photograpy, I think that´s why my photos often are quite symbolic.

Do you work mostly with clients in Iceland? Are your advertising clients drawn from the  artistic community around you. What kind of things do you do advertising work for?

I mostly do work for Icelanders, that´s where I´m based today. But I´m very interested in working with people from all over the world. I´ve had the chance to work for musicians based elsewere, working through the internet. That worked very well. The world is ever shrinking, it´s easy and not so expensive today to fly within europe, so today I´m rather mobile. I founded a company, called Rokkur, couple of months ago with Eyglo Scheving. We specialize in services for musicians and other artists. We do music videos, cd covers, websites, promo-shoots and more, musicians are mainly our clients today.
www.myspace.com/rokkuriniceland

It was my experience, when I started writing about music for newspapers when I was 17, that the artistic community was intertwined: painters, musicians, film-makers, photographers etc. all knew each other and naturally collaborated. Is that what happens in your world, in Iceland?

Yes, that is so awesome when creative people with different talents get togeather. So many good things happen. I´ve been working closely on a music video with a talented Icelandic musician, Eberg, http://www.eberg.net and we got some wacky Ideas, then Eyglo, another talented artist joined us. We are in the prosess of making the video, and I must say, the outcome is going to be very interesting.

Working with other artists who are in different fields sure opens your eyes and mind. I´m so lucky that my husband Halli, who is a guitarplayer and a software engineer, gives me good advice and constructive criticism. His mathematical thinking gives me so often a new perspective on things I´m working on.