Wikifood by Franca Formenti, is a mindful social network based on chefs original recepits, which are hidden through a steganography software. In order to decode the image and discover the hidden text, it is necessary to download a program from Internet

Description

The Wikifood project by Franca Formenti, is a mindful social network which has been created with these premises and concentrates on the following aspects:

- familiarity/difficulty of access to media stars;

- artifice/desire to have an authentic experience;

- the non-transparency of the dynamics of hiding/unveiling.

To emphasise the omnivorous characteristics of information and the necessity to metabolise them in order to acquire an identity, Franca Formenti has channelled her research through the body, food and legends. To go back to physicality is indeed the first movement of the concretisation of the experience, feeding oneself is the physical expression of vital growth, to create legends is the main action of the language of communicating through hiding/unveiling.

At the core of this concept is the mouth, a bodily organ whereby to introduce/interject and consume, the organ with which spiritual and material foods are exchanged, real foods are spiritualised into “artificial” delights and food of the spirit=idea is made up into recipes, quantities, data. The mouth is the cavity for the tongue and the home of taste, the organ of the technology of the word, the first medium freed for communication between humans.

As an example of the familiarity and contemporary unrecognisable aspect of media stars or legends, the category of chefs was chosen, who are the new demigods of an increasingly popular aesthetic in daily life, and who are exemplary for their manipulation of food into spiritual/media content. Every chef has given the Wikifood project an original recipe, which is intentionally hidden through a steganography software. In order to decode the image and discover the hidden text, it is necessary to download a program from the Internet, which will allow the user to read the “secret” recipe.

Franca Formenti invites the public to think about the concept of privacy through play and cookery. But with the possibility that every user has to use the same process of steganography to hide personal information that can be made visible only to “friends”, to make their profile picture a kind of medium through which to exchange secret messages, the reflection moves onto an even greater plain. That is, a greater awareness and mindfulness of our presence on the Net....