STREETSAUCE

The StreetSauce project emerged from our long-term HotKarot & OpenSauce experimentation with edible data and storytelling, extending this inquiry into more socially engaged context. StreetSauce explores the possibilities of edible storytelling as an occassion to nurture diverse and inclusive human-food interactions.

The project was initiated in 2014 as a collaboration with the NGO Homelike that provides social support to home-less women. We met with nine Homelike women who were interested in our collaboration proposal and spent some time together, talking and listening to their stories: about their everyday lives, memories as well as plans and wishes for the future. These stories, capturing moments and glimpses of a life on street, yielded source data for OpenSauce recipes narrating stories of the nine women’s lives.

The women started cooking in our bistro, serving hot carrots with their personal storytelling sauces, inviting bistro visitors to listen and ’taste’ the possible, rich and varied, flavours of living without home. Visitors who wish to reciprocally share their own story at the bistro can do so, by creating their personal sauce right on the spot, using the online OpenSauce cookbook.

Each StreetSauce bistro menu is varied and colorful: each person has a different story, each story has a different flavor that come together around the street bistro, as an interface over which new conversations and relations can emerge.

In 2014-2018, the StreetSauce bistro travelled across various public venues in the Czech Republic and regularly appeared at exhibitions and art festivals as a performative happening or interactive installation, serving as a convivial space for people of diverse backgrounds to share food and stories. We have also co-written several research texts, offering the edible storytelling concept and practice for a wider reflection.  

Similar as in other HotKarot & OpenSauce projects, the storytelling sauces are generated over the online OpenSauce cookbook that runs a network text analysis and translates the chefs’ stories (keywords) into sauce recipes (ingredients). Below are sauces made by chefs Eva and Ruzenka, other StreetSauces – such as those by Zuzka, Helca, and Jana are available in the cookbook.

Homelessness, or life without home, is an extreme form of social exclusion. Female homelessness is especially sensitive case, as it often remains ’hidden’ to the public eye. Many homeless women are not rough sleepers and stay in temporary shelters such as asylum houses. While male homelessness is sometimes seen as ’adventurous’, women are typically seen as failing their expected roles of mothers and carers. This is also reflected in the sauce recipes of the StreetSauce chefs, whose stories and contexts are being brought into a wider public attention through the project’s edible storytelling design.

 

Eva is cooking her sauce. The recipe is based on her story, which she kindly shared with us in our studio.

As a design research project, StreetSauce explores the possibilities of speculative food artifacts in encouraging socially inclusive interactions. The technological spectacularity of OpenSauce together with the sensorial and familiar appeal of food can attract audiences that might otherwise not be interested or able to engage with the issues of homelessness. Broadly, the bistro probes the use of speculative design in everyday-life contexts, beyond the limited realm of art galleries and showrooms.

SELECTED STREETSAUCE EVENTS

StreetSauce at Spline Festival [Pilsen, CZ]

StreetSauce at Random Blends 2015 Inter [______]! exhibition, ArtScience Museum [Singapore]

StreetSauce at Brick & Chic Design Showcase [Prague, CZ)

StreetSauce at Festival of Performance, Ferdinand Baumann Gallery [Prague, CZ]

StreetSauce at Farmer’s Market Prague [CZ]

StreetSauce at Pokoje showcase, Containall, Praha [CZ]

Street Food Festival, Cross Club, Praha [CZ]

StreetSauce at Mikrofest sociálního umění, Venuše ve Švehlovce Prague [CZ]

StreetSauce at Science Day Prague [CZ]

STREETSAUCE AT EXHIBITIONS

Dolejšová, M., Lišková, T. (2017). StreetSauce: Nurturing Speculation in Service Design. Interactions, 24 (5), 34-39. doi:10.1145/3121346 [pdf]

Dolejšová, M., Lišková, T., Obert, M. (2017). HotKarot & OpenSauce: Edible Storytelling & Design Speculations. Proceedings of the 3rd Biennal Conference on Research Through Design. [pdf]

Dolejšová, M., & Lišková, T. (2015). StreetSauce: Taste Interaction and Empathy with Homeless People. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, Republic of Korea. [pdf]

Dolejšová, M. (2014). StreetSauce: Designing the Taste of Life. Talk at FoodCHI’14, Brisbane, Australia