Its a Star Jellie
Sometimes ideas fall together quickly. several times the last week this one has made its way through my mind until all at once this morning I could see a whole system come to life.This last week or so I discovered the work of Homaro Cantu the food wizard who wants to feed the world. My mind has been considering the immediate ramifications of his work based on the WIRED article about the 8 tank algae system. Of course I am with him on feeding everyone, part of the dream of universal literacy is to be certain that very small children even are fed as well as the rest of society. At once it struck me in one of my conversations with one of my kids that it was indeed kids that would adapt to this very quickly, that the answer as so often in history has been is candy. Most of Homaro Cantu's food is very adult oriented, this FLYP magazine article on Cantu details his confectionery performances in his Chicago restaurant.
The idea of sustaining several different vats of algae on a rooftop that provide feedstock into printer type cartridges and fabricate 3d shapes of food is fascinating. Truthfully I am not sure if it is all worked out yet I can imagine a system in which this sort of technology can quickly be mapped out to a diverse population in the developing world, a population that invariably tinkers and creates and leapfrogs new adaptations into technologies.
Sweets have a unique and adventure charged history. One of my favorite research projects that I pursue for entertainment purposes is Konpeito. These are special crystallized sugar sweets that are primarily produced using traditional pannier methods in Japan. They have an engaging knobby surface from the slow spinning of the sugar pan, a giant copper bowl which spins for days creating the confection. The Portuguese brought the creation to Japan, the suspicion I have always entertained is that it was among the possessions of the Pilot Major who set course for the Portuguese and navigated the boats across the water. These were gifted scientists often with a background that included Sufi studies if not being outright Sufi like the early practitioners of medicine and science Galen and Archimedes and so many others. Crystallized sugar is one of their ancient practices.
Actually a lot of early chemistry in the United States and in general the early indexes have lots of reactions for fake cinnamon flavor and other essences created for candy manufacture. When the Taliban occupied Afghanistan many professional women banded together to make sweets in a sort of collective factory. Part of the purpose was to create a workspace for the women while they were prevented from pursuing their previous professions and part of the the projects intended purpose was to bring some sweetness into the lives of the children in that war torn region.
Candy has shape, it has motif, it is playful and whimsical and it can be used to represent the real world in imaginative ways.
Already lots of cultures have a sort of similar candy to what I would attempt at a first run. A thick gelatin which is carefully favored and sweetened. With a printer the potential for motif embedded in the gel is very tantalizing. The first thing that came to mind was a jelly star, the star being green and having potent protein in it and the surrounding gelatin being clear and having perhaps an added boost of vitamin C.
Lately I have been considering quite a bit how to integrate the idea of bioinformatic systems that have a very immediate feedback loop and a large set of manually entered data coming in every day which can be viewed and manipulated. In consideration of this system the idea of remuneration is where I tend to get stuck.
After all if we are simply going to pay children pennies to enter in important information about the environment around them are we going backwards somehow? It may be that these children feel a pressing obligation to advance the economic conditions of their families however child labor laws were enacted for very good reason.
The companies that wish to gather this data can actually do so more elegantly by creating outlets for this sort of candy and food making. By creating a closed loop between the use of the phones to harvest information and the physical immediate remuneration through candy and perhaps also school supplies and access to electrical charge ups the creation of a system that connects water to information seems not only possible it seems inevitable.
The persistent existence of the algae fabbing station can create an immediate opportunity for innovation and experimentation as locally available ingredients and flavors can be combined with the algae stock to create different types of food and candies. The use of water in the creation of the foodstock and energy stock can be closely monitored and in fact the entire project can be seen as one big school itself of how to establish a sustainable system and create database workforces using the soft infrastructure of the extisting youth population and educational desire as the primary force to move the process forwards. The water system cycle and the attending issues of waste and purity all become curriculum.
Somehow the star jelly represents a section of the process.
