Dare to make food your art form - Caroline Hobkinson

0:08The idea of actually sharing bread and getting together into the real room is such a kind of hyper real moment of our existence as well, where we perceive certain flavors. We can't escape from it because obviously screen-based interactions are very clinical. I have a lot of agency about how I'm perceived. I can put the light on, I can modulate the sound, the microphone. But food is really real and you can't escape that sense of reality and I think that of experienced lived reality. There's no VR for food. Food doesn't exist in the metaphors and AI can't actually explain taste and flavor to us.

0:46And I think that's going to be more and more the intimate of having meals together. And I think even how brands are now interacting with the consumer is through those bespoke dining experiences or dinners where they put them together.

1:08Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Rajem Malinic. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

1:58Today I'm speaking with Caroline Hopkinson, food artist, food anthropologist and a person who will permanently change how you think about every meal you've ever eaten. Caroline's journey took her from studying multidisciplinary arts to building a practice that sits at the intersection of neuroscience, performance and sensory design. Over 20 years, she has moved between advertising, immersive dining and radical wellness, always using food as the entry point to shift how people perceive themselves and the world around them. In this conversation, Caroline explores why food is our last act of radical agency in an algorithm-controlled world, how sound physically changes the taste of what we eat And why we surrender, not control, is the gateway to the most extraordinary experiences.

2:46It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Caroline Hopkinson.

2:55Hey, Caroline, welcome to Daring Creativity. How are you doing today? I'm very well. Thank you so much for having me. You're most welcome. For the record, you and I have met very briefly at one of my supper clubs with lots of amazing creative leaders. and this is for the record. I don't know too much about you. I've got no questions prepared, but I'm curious. And the reason why you're here is because you do food art and anthropology. You do work with sensory objects so close to our hearts and minds and not taste buds. So I'm hoping that we can join dots and find out who's Caroline Hopkinson, what do you do, how do you do it?

3:33So please introduce yourself. It's beautiful to start off with a blank slate. I am a food artist and food anthropologist. I love the way that food, obviously, as you mentioned, we met during one of your supper clubs where you believe breaking bread is a really great way to bond with people to get right through there. But obviously, eating is our most intimate ritual. It's the most intimate way we interact with our environment, with other people. And for millennia, we shared meals and we have anchored memory, community and meaning with it. And especially now that it's a world shaped by algos, algorithms, we still choose what passes our lips.

4:15So I would say it's our last bastion of radical agency, because if you give me content, visual content, there's such an onslaught of visual content. But I can close my eyes, I can avert, I can click and block other things. But food is one thing that I have absolute agency about. The idea of we get really frustrated and angered when we say, this is how you prepare the food from your hometown. And people get really revved up. No, this is not the right way. And I quite like that. I like the passion there. But actually what passes our lips is incredibly intimate. It's more intimate than sex. Because unless we become pregnant, food stays with us on a metaphysical level.

4:53You can see that I had a coffee eight months ago on the strand of my hair. And I think it's interesting that when it comes to time and intentionality in our world, now it's full of intention. When it comes to spirituality retreats, the way that we put food into our body, it's the ultimate marker of intentionality. So I think that's really powerful in that way. Yeah, I think for me, food is there's a tangible reality around us. And we're living this double life of everything that's on our Insta feed and our news feed online. But actually food really anchors us in the present. It's very much like the stuff that's around us.

5:29It forces us to be present in there. And the idea of shaping us and sharing bread with other people, sharing a meal is the ultimate bonding thing of being present together in the room where we traditionally put our knives down. We put our weapons to the side. And that's why when you go to a restaurant, you have this really annoyingly blunt knives. And even if you order steak, they have to make a big song and dance and bring you a sharp knife. because that's the one time where we are together and we come together in peace or intentionality of peace. Caroline, I can literally, for my lack of questions, I can literally just take everything you've said and make a whole hour of our conversation about this because the way you bring together food as a ritual and a performance and social commentary, I think you find yourself in this unique spot where you see it from such a different perspective because what I love what you said, You said there's intentionality of what we put into our bodies.

6:24My first entry was like, do we really intentionally put things into our bodies or is it just convenience? Is it just a pattern? Because you talk about the food being cooked by people from your, let's say, from the hometown. And they are very proud about how they make it and any other version of it is not quite right. So how did you, how do we trace it back to you being born in Cologne and now finding yourself in England, working across all of this? I was drawn to London to study at Central St. Martin's because I really liked the idea of multidisciplinary art. So I went to St. Martin's, really loved everything to do with choreography and spectacle and creating performance-based art.

7:04I like the ephemeral of food that you create this meal and then it's just gone. And the idea that it doesn't stay. And then working a lot with rituals, I realized I use the word ritual and it's overused. what are habits, what are rituals. And what I'm really into was working as well with neuroscience, but the idea where does anthropology come in and food anthropology, because it shapes who we are and the habits, how we eat, because the meals we prepare are the punctuation of our lives. They're the question marks, they're the commas, they're the exclamation marks. The idea that every time we celebrate a moment, food is the anchoring point.

7:40And that's something that I find really beautiful obviously if you have the intentionality of a dinner of coming together during a dining experience or how brands launch themselves is through a dinner it's an influencer dinner it's even if visually like food is the ultimate luxuries like the idea of we've gone away from material goods and tangible goods into experiences but these experiences are obviously very random and very easily retraceable but a food and a dinner is very much that's us here in the here and now and it can't be repeated we've all had this you have the same food the same dinner but different people and it's a completely different vibe and I think that's a really powerful thing the idea of what just happened on a different night and sometimes it's just magic but there are all these components which I really like and I think we are that's what ultimately makes us human and it's away from algorithms and AI because it's the idea of it's our perception that changes us like the only reason I know that I'm there is the way I perceive my surroundings in there.

8:41We take the world from our surroundings and our brains are categorizing and building a picture, but the inner picture is highly super variable. There's a variable. It's like your reality is different to mine, but when we have food, it brings us on the same level and it's really democratic because we both eat the same thing. So we can almost relate towards different things, like the idea of our culture and perception is the only way we can drive the story. it's almost like I experienced therefore I am and I think that's a really important part of experiences because that's ultimately where the world is going and it's like we curate and we need experiences in order to justify our whole experience and to get away from this onslaught of yeah different algorithm pushed content which is mostly visual I'm really curious because that was going to keep us on the straight with me trying to ask more about food anthropology because I'm sure there's lots of people looking around the room like, what do you mean with food anthropology?

9:39But I'm going to take a hard left and ask you actually more about the perception because you said that at some point when we eat food, it's the leveler. We got a similar perception of what we eat in. But how do I taste buds differ? Because even for example, with color, like visual perception, we see color differently. There is a preset sort of average of what you might see. For example, I've realized my left eye is more saturated than my right eye. So I don't even see color through both eyes in the same way. So when it comes to eating food from the point of neuroscience or from the point of the biological truth, how do we perceive taste and does it differ from one another?

10:17Because not everyone is the same. We have got a similar vehicle, our vessels, our bodies. But with the perception, when we talk about a fact, when you mentioned the food is ultimate luxury it's even the term of actual not food is ultimate luxury not many people would perceive it that way because they wouldn't think it that way so can you talk about perception a little bit i think it's yeah it's beautiful because obviously our side is very arbitrary and it's like our side vision changes and food as well as base is our own biography but he can almost time travel through every bite we take because obviously transports us to all the other moments we have experienced the same case the morsels proof's idea of dunking a madeleine into hot tea and suddenly transports him into a different time when he was young it's really beautiful but there is a lot of unilateral truth to it it depends of because obviously our mouth has a similar size so i can almost working with unusual ingredients which it's a really beautiful project I started with two amazing sound artists where we had an estimated consumption time because obviously the mouth is shaped very similar to everyone and the amount it takes to actually eat something so if I create a soundtrack that is the estimated consumption time of a bite for instance if it's three minutes I can create a beautiful soundtrack to make it last that long and the responses of those are very unilateral like the idea of having a high frequency brings out sweetness.

11:46Having a low frequency brings out bitterness in food. And there's a certain universal truth to it because evolutionary how we respond to food or bitterness. Most people relate to bitterness to danger because bitter in nature is obviously a signifier for something that's bad for you. But when we have kids, obviously, we always think, oh, they have to learn to have a really beautiful palate. But actually kids have more taste buds than adults and that's why they wouldn't like certain things so it's not so much of a child being a fussy eater they just have more taste buds to detect it so obviously it's a bit un-pissy but if you want the best whiskey taster would probably be a 10 year old child because they can actually detect all the nuances and it rather than the average the typical person where whiskey is marketed is would be like that 60 year old guy but actually by then your taste buds are quite diminished So it's really interesting how that changes.

12:40But obviously, having all of that knowledge is almost like I use it as a palette, like an artist with a palette and using that and modulating and actually choreographing those moments. Obviously, I'm not saying that we should eat like this all the time, but they create beautiful moments where we have and share moments where we heighten our sense of perception and awareness of how we perceive it. And it's beautiful, but obviously it's not newfangled science. Obviously, the big world religions have used that for a long time. So when I say I create radical immersive dining experiences, obviously the Catholic Church recreates that every Sunday when physically you eat the body of Christ.

13:22And it's like we are queuing up towards having this communion thing. But every time you go and have a coffee from a barista, this is such an important touch point where people are waiting in line to have their coffee. And the ultimate flex in every urban environment is that people know my coffee order and they call my name and it's Caroline. and that's for me and then I'm waiting in line to almost receive the communion of my coffee in that way so it's very much about how we interact within ourselves and that human connection and most people say that actually the moment they have that coffee is the only human interaction for the entire day because a lot of our meetings happen online so I think that's a really important thing because you think how in a world where we could all have our coffee at home people still venture out to that one specific coffee place and it's very hyped and they make coffee just so it becomes like a modern communion in that way so that's where the anthropology comes in because it's the habits and the ritual of standing in line and the anticipation it's like the most beautiful part is it's unnerving as well when you're really hungry and food is just about served and you're trying to hold yourself back because the host hasn't opened the dinner yet but we are hungry we're salivating we just want to tuck in and it's it's a really beautiful the anticipation moment just before dinner is gorgeous when you say it's really beautiful i think there's lots of hungry people go no no no no it's a sugar drop i need my food i need my food but what's really interesting what you said about bitterness because from what i know that the bitterness is also like the sign of making something feel so odd and so different that we believe it's actually let's say it's medicine the reason why medicine is bitter is because we need to believe that it's doing something that's potentially also why red bull is so popular or so effective because it doesn't taste like a natural drink so i think that acquired taste is something that it signals i'm guessing here but i believe it signals to the body this is different than the ordinary we'll be back after a quick break this episode is brought to you by lax coffee co the first creative speciality comfy company building a platform to shine a light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond.

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16:06but i think that's a really exciting thing the idea of bitterness when it comes to our taste perception and realizing how you mentioned acquired taste but it's actually it's a lived memory where we we learned how to override the idea that bitter equals danger and that becomes a different archetype so it's almost you can tell that someone who likes bitter flavors is more of a thrill seeker, someone who's more of a risk taker. So you can almost profile someone who likes bitterness. It's the person who's more of a roller coaster person, someone who likes fast cars, someone who learns that at that moment of risk taking, there is more to learn, like having black coffee and something rather than the Netflix and chill person who likes soft flavors, vanilla, roses and pink.

16:54So there's the idea of the people pleaser. So actually our taste palettes is a very interesting insight into certain archetypes or union archetypes that exist, but you can almost get straight to it. So I can tell you about the personality of someone who actually prefers bitter flavors or has learned to override this initial very natural evolutionary stopping point. I'm loving this. Before we get to talk more about all the senses of food and experiences, I want to know a little bit more about you because you're clearly into people. you're clearly into performance and food and all everything around it and no one so eloquently ever described that impatient queue at starbucks or any other coffee chain to us it resembles a holy communion because i don't know who was the marketing genius who decided with starbucks we're going to put names on our coffees and apparently that's have earned a lot of trust and apparently that's elevated the experience i personally dislike it i always use a fake name i use it as a joke because who are you?

17:55What do you want from me? I just want a coffee and peas. And so it's interesting how it all works for different people. But how did you get interested and curious about food and curious about humans, ancestry of food and all of that journey? Because we put it together, in my opinion, sort of inspirations and influences from different places. So how did you become you and where did it come from? I think I'm fascinated by people and different patterns And the idea that food, show me what you eat and your likes and your taste and you tell me who you are. And I think that's a really beautiful portal into the inside into that.

18:33Having worked in advertising as a creative director, I always thought it's really interesting how marketing towards people and it's such a guessing game. But actually deep diving into psychology and archetypes, there's so many fabulous patterns where you can actually have such a beautiful insight. And I think insights and semiotics are really fascinating. And food is a really great thing because it's something we do every day. It's very personal, very intimate, but it shows so much about our personality and our lived experience, our biography and that. And I think maybe I just like deep diving into it and then using neuroscience is obviously as an information tool for that.

19:13And as well, decoding certain ways and patterns and behavior patterns. I find human behavior endlessly fascinating and how obviously that is used by big brands. When you mentioned coffee chains as well, whether we like it or not, makes a lot of people a lot of money. And I think the idea of how we change in a different environment, because obviously depending how old you are as well, it's like we know that life before social media or before screen-based things, the idea of anchoring ourselves in the here and now perception is more than ever really important. The idea of what is our experience and experiencing and how do we coincide.

19:51There are different realms. There's the online realm and there's the real life realm all around us. And I think food really anchors us. It's like the idea of getting 20 people together in a room. It's always, we perceive it as really magical. You and I were born in the same decade. Actually, not too far from each other. I'm thinking when you're describing this sort of pre-screen time and now with the screen time and the age of digital natives. when you and I were growing up I would like to assume that the food on our table was very similar there was not too much of a performance there was not too much of a theater about food it was functional it was in some way basic and it was not trying too much but now I would love to believe that there's so much theater about food and is it because we were longing for it we needed it is it because we know more it's because that's the minimum viable dinner if that makes sense because I think we've got two polar opposites.

20:44We've got the comfort food, we've got fast food, and then we've got food excellence, and then something in the middle, which is some consumer food and what we make at home. This is sort of me simplifying all of this. But I'm really trying to find the way, like, how does the food theater come from? Is it because there's a space, there's necessity, there's curiosity, or is it all of the above combined? I think it's such a kind of beautiful shorthand to get to know people as well, and nowadays we can. And it's this endless videos on TikTok about what I eat in the day. And people love watching that.

21:16It's like they love watching food shows. The idea of the performative eating element is very much there. And I think that's obviously through social media that's heightened because obviously there was nothing. Food was much more private. And I think now it's much more in the realm of what people are eating and people are not eating as well. It's like the idea of that's a constant, endless fascination. But I think that's something that has shifted a lot, I think, through social media and people living out their life online. And it's very clinical. But I think when it comes down to food, suddenly it conjures up different flavors and smells, although I can't actually yet like transport that through the screen.

21:55But just almost the auto suggestion of the smell of the coffee or someone preparing food up close and the abundance of food, it's very hyper personal. It's almost the way food is prepared is almost pornographic in that way. There's a certain like glistening in your face, like abundance of the way people use food in that way. And it's very bonding and it cuts right through a clinical notion of, because yeah, it's, it's food is obviously multi-sensory. It has a smell, it has a sound, it has a taste. And obviously that gives as well rise to countless ASMR videos of people chewing food, something that's been for millennia perceived as embarrassing and disgusting is suddenly seen as someone preparing food and the minute detail of sound captured by people are chewing or eating and preparing food is something yeah it's again very intimate and there's an intimacy I think it's almost a counter trend to the loneliness epidemic of people are sharing those moments because when you spend most of the time on that realm of the the online realm where we feel like we're bonding with complete strangers and the majority of people I see I have more screen time with people I follow online than actual real friends but these are strangers to my life but I know what they eat they're sharing their lives with me and depending on like how unhinged I am I wouldn't say I spend so much time on there I see them more than my closest friends but I have such intimate details of their life how they prepare how they take their coffee whether they're going through things but I I think that's a short term and people that's as well used and abused by different brands in order to create that really close bond.

23:34You said that the preparation of food is almost pornographic. But I think pornography, the term could be almost pursued as not real. But to you, what you described it, again, we talk about perceptions. you described as almost this vulgar in your face intimate experience rather than when we got food porn it's more like this is the stuff you might never make because it's out of your realm your food's never going to be this good looking or whatever so in that perception and you talk about the amsr a lot has changed the more of it is on show and when you were talking about this in your answer i was thinking how many seasons of chef's table i've watched and how many of knife edge episodes I've watched and all of those things but what really fascinates me is that person who would go across the tallest mountain just to find the right leaf of parsley how they would go and just get the right ingredient and they say look I haven't seen my kids in six months because I'm trying to get this restaurant going I'm thinking well I guess suppose someone has to do it there might be real people screwing at the screen going why would you do that and then there'll be other people like oh well done I understand you because we got two different perceptions again how are these people so into their craft i want to say obsessed but obsession is one part of food how would you give it so much because ultimately it's in the service of others because they could have easily done something for themselves differently i find that passion but i would say it's obviously it's greed that makes us go and if you think about spanish people the spanish armada going over and trying to go towards america's which not 100 knowing that the earth might fall off but obviously they didn't go just to conquer new land.

25:14They were literally driven by greed because someone showed them pictures of possible coffee and exotic fruits. And again, greed is what gets us to go to China because these guys have noodles there. They have rice. It's delicious. Let's go. And these were people who would leave their families behind, not even knowing that the earth is round. And that was always, I think humanity and mankind has always been driven by this greed of conquering new land. But the reason we go towards different places and people were trying to make this incredible vast sea voyage was because they were different. The promise of a pineapple, the promise of bringing back foods that we don't have and yeah, sugar and sweetness.

25:55And I think that's definitely something that makes the world go round. And I think the biggest commodities is like avocado followed by banana. I mean, that's what the world economy is driven by food. So I think that's fascinating. And I think it's greed, but it's good greed. and that gets us closer. It's like finding the ultimate conquest is always that one flavor we haven't had yet. It's like the newest taste. I think humans, and that unites us all, is that we are very greedy when it comes down to it. That's really interesting you say greed because I made a note, I said greed versus curiosity because I guess greed is not a gluttony, I suppose, but is there greed versus curiosity?

26:37Greed has been portrayed negative in the Judeo-Christian realm by Puritans. But the idea of greed is something that drives us forward. It's got a negative connotation, but it's just the idea of, I would say it's a gustatory curiosity is the idea of, I'm just, yeah, hunger, hunger, like a good quest, hunger quest that makes us go and cross. And like you go to Paris to find the best crosser, the flakiest crosser. You go to New York and you go to all the coffee bars to get the best cold drip coffee. It's beautiful, but it drives humankind and it makes us do things. The Romans built vineyards and they knew that in their lifetime they wouldn't taste the wine, but it makes us build things and build vineyards for generations to come.

27:21And I think there's a beautiful sentiment towards the hunger quest. Let's put it that way. You're absolutely right. Greed has got a negative connotation, but so does envy, even though envy can be a positive thing. Envy can be a drive because it gives you a spur of what you could be or what you can do. I want to talk about the fact how you said we can choose what we eat. We can choose how we curate our food and what we put into our mouths. But in a book titled Ultra Process People, there was a quote saying that we are currently a part of a wide experiment we've got no control over. Because the food manufacturers, the producers, supermarkets create food that we need to find enough food or we need to create enough food for 8 billion people.

28:04I don't want to get too deep onto UPFs and that kind of stuff, but how do you find this type of food that plays with our perception and potentially gives us less choice in a busy life to eat well or to look after ourselves? Yeah, I think eating well or what passes our lips is like the last bastion of radical agency and obviously feeding all the people in the world obviously has limitations as well. And I think it has to do with intentionality. And I think the missing link is mindfulness and attention, what we put through our lips as well. But I think there's a beautiful awareness as well when it comes down to, I think cow's milk or the production of cow's milk, people choose actively oat milk over cow's milk.

28:50whether this is the answer or not, how we have actually agency through our food choices for environmental impact as well. So a lot of people turn vegetarian because not through personal taste preferences, but because of that, I think. And it's really interesting when it comes to anthropology, it's like the idea of traditionally, we were not meant to eat meat and celebrate food every single day. There are feast days and there are fast days. And if you look at different world religions and how we lived our life. We had lengths, we had times of fasting that is ingrained into humanity for centuries, for millennia.

29:27And now we're trying to find, I think, interval fasting is if this is like the latest new trends, but it's always been imposed on us. And I think it's the idea of the hyper convenience, which started off in the fifties. I think we're seeing the end of this time as well, where food is just there, the idea of plenty and the idea of scarcity and using up every single morsel and sometimes having bigger fasting windows as well is something that is 100 years ago everyone would obviously agree of course you have a fasting window and you don't eat a big meal and a feast every single day and it's the intentionality the anticipation of creating a feast looking forward to it as well looking forward to that meal and meeting people and coming together over breaking bread rather than having this very individualized eating of hyper convenience I think hopefully we'll see an end to that as well obviously it sadly it's driven by socioeconomic restrictions as well because obviously when I talk about intentionality obviously it is very much of course it is about how to make that accessible to wider mass of people rather than the chosen few who can choose to individually source their food as well and I think there's a lot of possibility as well because obviously those scarcities and the problems are they're becoming bigger problems as well it's like how can we have limit food miles and there are a lot of community gardens hydroponics where we're growing food much more locally as well and with much more attention you mentioned the experience of seclusion when we consume our food because i feel through our screens we've never been more connected to different types of food different curiosities potentially exercise our greed in a way of what is there where i can find and what sort of experiences can I have but is it the arrival of the medium has given us greater choices of where we can work but has actually divided us more than ever because we can hide in our own spaces and still be connected through a screen but we're losing that social contact I completely agree that we are I think by living so much of our lives on our screen we're creating a double life there are two different realms there's the realm of our online life and there's a real life life and I think it's about food it's almost like the missing anchor it's an axis that's connected to realms as well because obviously there's a loneliness epidemic obviously I have kids so for me sometimes we go like loneliness sounds like a really wonderful thing as well I love I yearn to be lonely but obviously that's different and a lot of people in their 20s they work incredibly long hours on a screen and that coffee moment I mentioned with the community.

32:06It's one of the only human to human touch points or getting your sandwich. And I think that's the idea of actually sharing bread and getting together into the real room. It's such a kind of hyper real moment of our existence as well, where we perceive certain flavors. We can't escape from it because obviously screen-based interactions are very clinical. I have a lot of agency about how I'm perceived. I can put the light on, I can modulate the sound, the microphone, but food is really real and you can't escape that sense of reality. And I think that of experienced lived reality, there's no VR for food.

32:42Food doesn't exist in the metaverse and AI can't actually explain taste and flavor to us. And I think that's going to be more and more the intimate of having meals together. And I think even how brands are now interacting with the consumer is through those bespoke dining experiences or dinners where they put them together and I think that's exactly why they're using it as well. That was a fantastic segue exactly to putting spotlight on what you do because you do work with brands you create experiences you curate their taste their crunch their smell their flavors and this ultimate luxury so what do you do in terms of work and how do you take a client?

33:24How do you devise an event? Can you tell us more about what you do? I like to curate different dining experiences. It's not just dining experience. I think they're more immersive experiences and teaching people how to be more present and creating those boundaries as well of how we perceive what comes physically towards us and not. And I think the idea of taking food in is a really good learning experience to talk about these things. But it comes from I'm creating high-end dinners where everything is a beautiful choreography. It's again about having the control about changing people and explaining more wonder to the world of creating beautiful bespoke soundscapes.