Parallel Infusion II
Categories
Installation
Collaborators
Solo Project
Material
Fog, Wood, Perfume, Metal, Video, Audio
Keywords
Food Futures Olfactory Experience Charleston House Deception Substitution Dining Ritual
Year
2023
This installation was developed from the broader speculative world of Parallel Infusion, which imagines a future in which food is transformed into an efficient fuel. While the larger project focused on spatial ritual and interior experience, this work condenses those questions into a single object-like architecture: a cabinet that stages appetite, memory, and uncertainty. Drawing from the atmosphere of Charleston House, it turns domestic familiarity into something theatrical, seductive, and slightly disorienting.
This installation was developed from the broader speculative world of Parallel Infusion, which imagines a future in which food is transformed into an efficient fuel. While the larger project focused on spatial ritual and interior experience, this work condenses those questions into a single object-like architecture: a cabinet that stages appetite, memory, and uncertainty. Drawing from the atmosphere of Charleston House, it turns domestic familiarity into something theatrical, seductive, and slightly disorienting.
At the centre of the installation is a Charleston-style cabinet from which scent slowly disperses. Smell becomes the main medium of encounter: elusive, immersive, and impossible to grasp fully. The work is interested in how aroma can trigger expectation even in the absence of edible substance, and how pleasure can be sustained through suggestion, atmosphere, and projection. In this sense, the cabinet becomes a device of deception — offering the trace of a feast while withholding the meal itself.
At the centre of the installation is a Charleston-style cabinet from which scent slowly disperses. Smell becomes the main medium of encounter: elusive, immersive, and impossible to grasp fully. The work is interested in how aroma can trigger expectation even in the absence of edible substance, and how pleasure can be sustained through suggestion, atmosphere, and projection. In this sense, the cabinet becomes a device of deception — offering the trace of a feast while withholding the meal itself.
Cabinet of Deceit ultimately reflects on a future in which the experience of food may outlast food itself. If pills, substitutes, and efficiency-driven systems come to replace eating, what remains of dining? The work does not answer directly. Instead, it constructs a sensory fiction in which smoke, scent, and light continue to perform abundance, even as the plate is left bare. What is consumed here may no longer be food, but the carefully staged experience of food.
In cabinet brimming, smoke unfurls,
Food’s dance eludes, in shadows it twirls.
Textures, flavors, hidden in play,
Light’s artful touch unveils the array.Pills, a new feast, in deceit they thrive,
Substitutes for sustenance, we connive.
Plate’s bare, cabinet’s deceit —
What remains to eat but the experience sweet?
Cabinet of Deceit ultimately reflects on a future in which the experience of food may outlast food itself. If pills, substitutes, and efficiency-driven systems come to replace eating, what remains of dining? The work does not answer directly. Instead, it constructs a sensory fiction in which smoke, scent, and light continue to perform abundance, even as the plate is left bare. What is consumed here may no longer be food, but the carefully staged experience of food.
In cabinet brimming, smoke unfurls,
Food’s dance eludes, in shadows it twirls.
Textures, flavors, hidden in play,
Light’s artful touch unveils the array.Pills, a new feast, in deceit they thrive,
Substitutes for sustenance, we connive.
Plate’s bare, cabinet’s deceit —
What remains to eat but the experience sweet?
