Making data digestible

Physicalising data affords new kinds of interaction that open opportunities for meaning making. In our research, we consider how using food as the material for data physicalisation might expand the impact of this emerging field of practice in relation to Food System transformation. Food is sensorially rich, culturally and politically potent, and environmentally impactful; its resonance may be felt keenly at a range of scales from the personal and situated, to the systemic and global. To examine the impact of using food to construct data, we discuss three examples: i) the launch of a public Food Lab; ii) a temporary installation focused on food waste and sustainability; and iii) a short design research masters project on food and sustainable futures. Across these cases food acts as icebreaker, prompt for new thinking and sustenance, as well as a potent vehicle for design experimentation. In examining them, we unfold the ways that using food as data may make data more digestible, and thus more impactful, for different contexts and actors.