Michelin-Star Tasting Menu Meets VR Art in Miami, Courtesy of Meta and Superblue - ARTnews

This year, during Art Basel Miami Beach, Superblue is expanding its mandate of presenting large-scale experiential pieces by engaging a consciousness often forgone by ocular artists: taste.

Right now, Superblue is offering a mixed-reality acquisition that is adjacent parts Michelin-star tasting paper and guided virtual world buffet. It’s a co-production with the Open Arts part of Facebook’s genitor company, Meta, which reportedly downsized its creation and plan subdivision earlier this month.

People who acquisition tickets ($58 during the day, $200 for an evening sitting) volition beryllium led into a futuristic eating room, designed by the creator and laminitis of Aerobanquets, Mattia Casalegno. Each diner volition gaffe connected a Meta Quest 2 VR headset earlier being served a specially created paper of amuse-bouches designed by cook Chintan Pandya.

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In the virtual world, guests volition beryllium guided by the dulcet dependable of Top Chef big Gail Simmons, portion the flavors and textures of the bites are rendered earlier their eyes and ears. The acquisition whitethorn beryllium hard to imagine, but that, successful a way, is the point.

“How bash you visualize taste? What is the signifier of spice? What is the colour of flavor?” Casalegno said successful an interview, describing his project. “I conceived Aerobanquets RMX as a full feast for the senses, a multi-sensory journey, a instrumentality to reprogram each our perceptive expectations.”

That’s nary tiny dish. 

The acquisition was inspired by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook. Published successful 1932, the cookbook is a postulation of surreal recipes that ponder what a person’s narration to nutrient volition beryllium similar successful the future. Casalegno was an aboriginal adopter of mixed reality, and with Pandya, he’s using The Futurist Cookbook as a springboard to analyse the narration betwixt exertion and food, drafting heavy connected the book’s utopian sensibility.

The paper includes astatine slightest immoderate ingredients that visitors volition find familiar, though galore are improbable to beryllium cooked utilizing methods practiced by Julia Child. There volition beryllium a “mousse of roasted hopes,” “a pearl that tastes similar the archetypal clip you ever spot your lip,” and a tart that evokes the “whistle that the upwind makes done a doorway fastener connected a acold autumn afternoon.” The repast volition beryllium accompanied by an archetypal people by the physics composer Martux_M, who precocious performed astatine Sonar festival successful Barcelona.

Casalegno archetypal conceived of Aerobanquets in 2018 with the assistance of a fellowship assistance from the Chronus Art Center. The task initially appeared successful Shanghai successful collaboration with Flavio G. Carestia, a cook astatine the Toscanini edifice successful Amsterdam. The pursuing year, it was presented astatine the James Beard location successful New York City. 

Since then, the exertion has improved significantly, particularly erstwhile it comes to the headsets being capable to replicate movements made successful the carnal world. To capitalize connected this, Casalegno and his accumulation studio, Flavor Five Studio, designed site-specific, custom-made furnishings to marque the acquisition arsenic dynamic and fluid arsenic possible. 

“It’s artists similar Mattia Casalegno, by diving fearlessly into the metaverse and challenging its boundaries, who germinate our knowing and capabilities successful this caller frontier,” said Tina Vaz, caput of Meta Open Arts.