Eating the Uncanny Valley: Inside the Virtual Reality World of Food
Myo Studios is banking on the notion that providing an enhanced visual experience through virtual reality will markedly up its food blog’s ante. Users will be able to “sit down in front of a steak from some restaurant, even though there’s no reservation for three months.” The VR food blog will also be able to “teach someone to cook from a first-person perspective.” DePaula-Santos told me, “One of my hopes is to not just take photographs of food, but also be able to animate it. If you see a sizzling steak in front of you, that’s just one way of stimulating more senses.”
“What about smell?” Perception Fixe is not quite there yet—it is only a visual virtual reality experience.
...what about the all-important act of actually consuming food in the VR world? Word of mouth led me to an ongoing project out in LA, ...
Project Nourished—created by Kokiri Labs and its founder, the ever-entrepreneurial Jinsoo An—bills itself as a “gastronomical virtual reality experience.” This mashup of molecular gastronomy and virtual reality allows users to “experience fine dining without concern for caloric intake of other health-related issues.”
...here’s the deal: You put on your VR headset, Oculus or otherwise; you lift your “food detection sensor,” which, at this stage of development, looks like nothing more than a wooden fork with two prongs wrapped in tinfoil; you eat a hydrocolloid—a flexible substance that is “viscous, emulsifiable, and low caloric”—that has been shaped in a 3-D printed mold to “add physical characteristics to the ‘faux’ food.” Then, with the help of a motion sensor, an aromatic diffuser, and a bone conduction transducer (more on that later) you experience a gourmet meal with no downside in the way of calories, carbs, or allergy-inducing ingredients.
The first three foods to be replicated in hydrocolloid form? Sushi, steak, and apple pie.
Despite its humble roots as a one-man endeavor, Project Nourished has ballooned into a multi-headed beast with a total of 11 creatives, each with varying backgrounds, including Mike Resendez, the molecular mixologist from The Bazaar’s Beverly Hills outpost, and Mark Manguera, the co-founder of LA’s Kogi and Chego.
As hard as it is to get smell right, hitting the mark when it comes to replicating texture or toothsomeness is even more difficult.
...Project Nourished is being pitched as a possible remedy for anorexia, bulimia, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and allergies.
See the full story here: http://munchies.vice.com/articles/eating-the-uncanny-valley-inside-the-virtual-reality-world-of-food