Miami Art Week 2022: Artist Mattia Casalegno's “Aerobanquets RMX” at Superblue - Cool Hunting

An immense, interactive art-saturated playground, Superblue Miami houses shifting floral walls, bubbling piles of massless clouds and a 3,000-LED installation that flickers to the bushed of collected heartbeats. Running lone this Miami Art Week 2022 (on present done 4 December), the immersive venue besides invites guests to dine connected potent small bites developed by the highly awarded cook Chintan Pandya (of Semma, Dhamaka and Adda acclaim). These delectable nibbles, however, are served portion each attendee is traversing the heavy realms of a surreal virtual satellite wrong an Oculus. Presented by Meta Open Arts, the perspective-shifting, mixed-reality acquisition is titled “Aerobanquets RMX” and it’s the groundbreaking imaginativeness of Naples, Italy-born, NYC-based creator Mattia Casalegno.

“Aerobanquets RMX” is simply a magnificent, cautiously woven creator world, wherever the creation informs the nutrient and, successful turn, the nutrient further influences the art. “We were inspired by The Futurist Cookbook. That’s wherever we started,” Casalegno tells us. Published successful 1932, the publication is simply a postulation of surrealist recipes anchored successful the thought of a utopian future, penned by Italian writer and theorist F T Marinetti. “We built the antithetic scenes and environments recovered successful the book, past we turned backmost to the menu. We thought astir flavors and colors inspired by the virtual spaces we made. And past we went backmost and further developed shapes and colors,” Casalegno says.

Food affects feelings—this is simply a conception has been addressed successful the story, arsenic well. “We privation to prosecute the feelings of our guests,” Casalegno continues. “We besides code however flavors converse with color. We play with expectations. We are not giving you immoderate thought what you are astir to eat. No 1 should cognize this successful advance.” The visuals shift. Realities melt away. Virtual objects appear.

Prior to putting connected the Oculus, attendees are told by the on-site squad however to find the articulator of the ceramic vas that their courses volition beryllium served on—this is simply a acquisition that enables radical to scope for the vas successful the virtual satellite with their digitally animated hands, and find it successful existent beingness with their existent fingers. The narration by cook Gail Simmons and the emotional, evocative imagery obscures the brain’s expectations of the real-life food. It’s astonishing however overmuch our different senses power what we are astir to taste.

“The astir absorbing portion of this paper is that everything has to beryllium bite-sized. There has to beryllium aggregate layers, aggregate textures and aggregate flavors successful 1 tiny bite,” Pandya tells us. “As a chef, initially it was precise hard for maine to deliberation astir however I could constitute it all, but I deliberation that’s the amusive of it. Your creativity has to flow. You indispensable question everything that you’ve learned.” Pandya’s cuisine, produced by Flavor Five Studio, is active, unexpected and flavorful.

Altogether, it’s a wondrous, sensorial pairing that tests the palate successful ways ne'er done before. Through each our experiences successful virtual and augmented reality, thing has tapped into the consciousness of taste. It’s not lone memorable, but a milestone successful the capabilities of the technology.

Images courtesy of World Red Eye