How would you define the main idea behind “Tactile Machine”?

The Tactile Machine is a “food-experience” installation, or as Marinetti would put it, a “formula for a possible meal”. Initially we where inspired by the work of this Italian Futurist, because of his futuristic vision of machines and especially his recipes for The Tactile Dinner that are part of the Futurist Cookbook, 1932. (As well as by the works of Bas Jan Ader, The Broken Fall Westkapelle, 1970, by Franz F. Feigls recipe A Commitment of Friends, 1996, by Yuri Yakoulows’ costumes for the ballet entitled Le pas d’acier, London, 1927 and by Patrick C. P. Faas’ historical cookbook Round the Roman table, 1994.) In these recipes it’s very important that every step of the meal is accompanied by tactile sensations, which will also give a different taste experience. Our “formula” is based on creating a “menu” on and with the human body. The courses have been designed to fit the body. For the guests it is also the experience of a body shared, because the guests are a couple (lovers?) enjoying this sensual mixture of culinary and physical experiences. The solid mechanicallity and the shelter-layering of clothing are subservient to this body sharing. It’s part of our interest to redefine and rede-sign kitchen utensils, as far as it’s functional for our work. Therefore we have built a new idea of the table, and of cooking/drinking de-vices and clothing.

Where was “Tactile Machine” first shown?

The project was first shown at Bellisima, an Amsterdam TV-station, as a part of a pilot for a new Art Cooking programme; Kook Eiland (Cooking Island) by Bastiaan Lips.

The bionic elements are part of our redesigned cooking utensils. They are partly organically connected and partly seemingly opposed, even violent. But there is no subtler way of spreading an ultra thin layer of taste on the skin than using our food cannon. The clothes have been designed to fit the bodies of our guests and the recipes. Clothes are made of a material from used army tents. On the tents we found instructions for setting them up, drawn in a special way, so we used this instruction pattern to write down our recipes, new ideas and our working process. (Adding a little humour to it all.)

How does the shared creativity function within this project?

Erik Hobijn is an innovator of mechanical solutions for human as-pects as in Delusion of Self Immolation and Chemo-bar where a social set up similar to a bar or a shared restaurant meal serves as a disposition map while inventions inside this map make up basic changes in a social output. Arlette Muschter is credited for her food forgery inventions that rose as a new form of art experience and she is also a founding member of group specialised in the same field, called Ready Maids. We have been working together for one year now. There is no direct separation in work, we have mobilised our own embodied knowledge and combined these in developing this visionary culinary possibilities. Of course, Erik does the male macho translation of cooking like welding and kinetics while Arlette’s cos-tumes and recipes function as a female stereotype but this is just an amplification of roles to the point of ridicule.

Can you describe the machine and the way that it works?

The machine is a metal frame around a pneumatic tilting bed, with a wooden bench on its left side. The bed is placed at the table height and is positioned vertically when one of the guests steps on it. The other guest can sit on the bench, close to the upper body and mouth of his/her partner. After the food cannon shoots at the belly, the bed will fall into a horizontal position. The salad tunnel is hanging from the top of machine. We are still developing new ideas, like the latest one; the self-stirring woks-machine. There are also garments, designed for each course separately, exposing a different body part that’s being “cooked” on. It’s still a machine under con-struction, growing on our hands as we work on new recipes.

It is not a test of the couple’s relationship, it is more like a shared choice to have a meal that is also meant to reach the couples’ em-bodied knowledge; these are the kind of memories that become physical, part of the body. They “grow on you” so to speak.

What is your typical serving menu?

Through the mouth and stomach food finally reaches the belly; the body part where emotions gather as well. If we try to let the food reach us in a different way, we start at the belly whereby the food is first being drenched in emotions while the satisfied belly-experience is merely seen as a counter-weight. In this way the food digestion becomes visible, emotions tangible, eatable and exchangeable. This happens through our formula when the ingredients — by way of our food cannon — are torn apart as if by teeth; ripped, devastated, de-stroyed by hydraulic pressure, sizzling through the air in very small pieces, slapping against the bare belly with a harsh painful blow. In this way, different tastes and substances are layered on top of each other. After the harsh receiving of the food upon the belly the bed tilts out of its vertical position. It topples over on the “gild edge” which means its turning point is not positioned in the center of the body, but lower, more at the legs’ height, which causes a sensation of falling, slow motion or delay, amplifying the experience of falling. As a result of this “domestication of the fall”, it starts to get simulation characteristics, but it remains a “broken” fall. This fall also helps the guest to get established in the right concentration, to literally fall and hand himself/herself over to the experience.