Media Bodies Wk 5 – Taste and Cooking

A synopsis on Tasteful Memories

  • This audio work is titled ‘Tasteful Memories’ and it focuses on the relationship that Emma (main character) has with a dish that her mother has always prepared for her. 
  • The auto piece follows Emma through her life and reflects how in many different situations, the special flavours, smells and feelings of the dish bring her peace of mind and joy. 
  • ‘Tasteful Memories’ aims to highlight the physical embodied experience of nostalgia through food and flavours. 

What worked well and what didn’t work quite so well

  • What hasn’t been working so well with this piece is the fact that I don’t find it as engaging as other works I have made. I reflect on this before and after submission/final edit:
  • Before: too repetitive, cooking sound effects don’t have a great rhythm, the whole piece is too long, more layering could be done but I am worried that I will complicate things, I want to add more edits to the V/Os but I am not familiar enough with Audition yet.
  • After: I was able to get some feedback on my audio piece which was very helpful. I was told that the music I included in the piece was not needed at all and to tighten the transition sounds in the piece. This feedback was great, immediately after adjusting my work, it felt more engaging. As well, this weeks reading assisted in thinking further of sounds to include in my work that would create more of embodied experience for the audience.

What did using only audio allow you to do with the narrative that you may not have been able to do in the same way with a video work? 

  • The audio work allowed me to create more of an abstract piece, rather than a typically standard, realistic video work, like my Week 4 video. 
  • I am satisfied with my video work and like most of the elements of the piece, however I was relieved that this week’s audio exercise allowed me to practice other areas of skill.

What was one idea from the reading (either your own or something mentioned by someone else) that you found interesting? How might you make use of that idea in either this week’s media making exercise, or in future work?

Heldke, L. M. (1992) ‘Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice’, in Curtin, D. W. and Heldke, L. M. (eds) Cooking, eating, thinking: transformative philosophies of food. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 203–229

  • The reading, ‘Food Making as a Thoughtful Practice’(Heldke L.M, 1992), highlighted the idea that in order to cook well, it is more important to have embodied knowledge than theoretical knowledge (Heldke, 1992).
  • The reason this idea stood out to me is because I have memories of watching my grandmother bake the most delicious cakes and never once look at a recipe. If I was ever to ask, ‘is it ready yet?’, she would simply say, ‘does it look ready?’, which of course as a young child, I would have no idea. Her embodied knowledge of how something looks, smells and tastes once finished has been built up over years of cooking.
  • This idea reminded me that in my audio work for this week, I must make sure to include sounds like sniffing and mouth tasting as well as the food being made, e.g sizzling, mixing and boiling.
  • I want the viewers to feel a sense of embodiment, not just like they are listening to food being made, but actually experiencing the process.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *



To prove you are a person (not a spam script), type the words from the following picture or audio file.