The resilients

As part of the two year project 'The Resilients' I will be leading 'The Edible Craft Design project',together with FoAm and the MA Textile Futures Course. The design team will explore the table landscape as a medium to communicate principles of resilience and interdependency. The design components will include food, textiles, tableware & dye sensitized solar cells, all produced with locally sourced ingredients.

The project has 2 complementary goals:

– to explore how food generates both calorifc (Joules) & electrical energy (Watts) & how this parallel can be taken into account when evaluating ecosystems

– to learn from traditional crafts, biology, biomimicry & food science to design environmentally resilient cultural experiences

The starting point are plants with properties suitable for making food, textiles & solar cells (e.g berries). Local ethno-culinary traditions, biological & ecological context of the chosen plant is studied and a scenario for an 'edible' dining environment is designed. The experiment should be transferrable to different localities in Europe.

This project will result in a series of exhibitions, performances, and design prototypes. Collet also anticipates writing up the research for journal publications and conference papers.