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Brooke Roberts-Islam Become a fan Slashie (Knitwear Designer, Consultant, Lecturer) and Ex-Radiographer.

Posted: 05/11/2015 10:01 GMT Updated: 05/11/2015 10:59 GMT

Noma's Food Language, GPS-Tracked Garbage and theWorld Exclusive of Pussy Riot's Dismaland Music Video.It Must be WIRED 2015, Part 2

Continuing in the theme of Artificial Intelligence (covered in part 1), Carlo Ratti presented some exciting work from the MIT Senseable CitiesLab. Standouts were a trackable waste project where members of the public brought in 3000 pieces of garbage which were then fitted withGPS sensors and tracked, with alarming results. Some objects made it across America and were still on the move after two months. Theproject increased awareness of recycling and changed participants' garbage disposal behaviours.

Carlo then demonstrated that the implication of self-driving cars in the future will extend beyond safety (eliminating human error - thecause of over 90% of road traffic accidents) to reducing congestion. Traffic lights would be eliminated and a slot-system used byinterconnected cars sensing each other's position to avoid collision. The potential use of one self-driving car to drive all the members of afamily (and their friends/neighbours) to their respective destinations, blurring the lines between private and public transport, is aninteresting prospect too. With such a system, cities could meet all residents' current transport requirements with only 20% of the number ofcars that are currently on the road, based on journey research done in New York. Imagine the reduction in traffic, congestion andimprovement to air quality?! Lastly, Carlo showed us a video of UAV-enabled app, SkyCall, created to respond to requests from MIT visitorsto guide them to whichever room number they tap into their app. The UAV talks the visitor though the sights on campus along the way. On acampus with hundreds of rooms scattered over a vast area it's a cool idea. I wonder if it could be used for events; Directing people to thecorrect seat at a fashion show, or the theatre, perhaps. Check it out here:

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SKYCALL

The afternoon session was opened by Rene Redzepi and brought culinary adventure to proceedings with a detailed foray into the scientificexperiments of the famous Danish restaurant he co-founded, Noma.

Noma create flavours. They seek not to use ingredients for dishes but to make building blocks of flavour that can then be combined to createeither a sauce, or a dish. It's akin to writing a new food language, with the building blocks being new words (new flavours) and thecombination of them (the sentence) being the dish, as explained by Noma R&D chef Lars Williams, accompanied by Arielle Johnson, flavourscientist. Fermentation is what underpins this language, and through a series of taste tests they demonstrate that fermentation is a cookingutensil at Noma, rather than simply a technique. It is their chief mode of experimentation and gives rise to new and complex flavours thatdevelop over time. Lars explains that these new flavours cannot be manufactured. The ingredients are controlled precisely in DIY vesselsthey made out of shipping containers that have a range of minus 50 to plus 60 degrees and exacting humidity control. It's a fascinatinginsight, and given that it's a non-profit initiative serving only 45 covers for each of their lunch and dinner service, it's admirable.

Cute illustrations by flavour scientist Arielle Johnson

We were given a goodie bag of vials from the Noma kitchen to taste during Lars and Arielle's talk, one of which contained fermentedgrasshopper garum, which had a fishy miso-like flavour. Here's how Lars makes it:

Grasshopper Garum from Rene Redzepi on Vimeo.

Here's Noma's story in the words of Rene Redzepi:

A Very Short Film About the Past, Present and Future of Noma from Rene Redzepi on Vimeo.

The food-inspired architects responsible for the following imagery, Christopher Pierce and Christopher Matthews take food and turn it intomaterials, shapes and schematics for buildings and landscapes. Their imagination runs riot and gives rise to a world of food-basedexperiments that result in fantastical architectural plans.

The moving urban farm plan, Copenhagen

Architectural plan for a city decomposing left to rightThe images below are from a project to create architectural plans from leeks. The leeks were dehydrated in an oven and into which porcelainwas poured to reveal the dried layers inside, to stunning effect.

For more information about the two Christopher and Christopher's projects click here

The perfect punctuation for these meaty (sorry, I couldn't resist) talks was live music curated by Denzyl Feigelson, founder of AWAL,including breakthrough Brit artist Izzy Bizu, who is currently touring with Rudimental. She came over to say hi after her stunningperformance of White Tiger to let me know my knitted outfit and multi-coloured platform trainers had caught her eye whilst she wassinging. I promptly dispensed my card so keep an eye out for Izzy Bizu in Brooke Roberts Knitwear.

Izzy Bizu - White Tiger (Of9cial Video)

A medical imaging treat came in the form of Neuroscientist Sophie Scott's MRI scan of Reeps One beatboxing. It's a fascinating insight intothe function of the brain during execution of complex sounds and the areas of the brain most active while generating them. It satisfied mycraving for medical images as an ex-radiographer of two months.

Reeps One Beatboxing MRI

The theme of Intelligence runs throughout all the talks at Wired 2015, whether derived from the application of AI or applied followinganalysis of Big Data, the future looks set to provide better healthcare, safer roads, cleaner cities and a more connected global community.The day wraps up with a softly-spoken but defiant instalment by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot notoriety. Although she didn'tspeak on digital activism as billed, she lent a voice of independent thought and personal struggle. She spoke of her belief in a life withoutborders and declared herself a citizen of the world. Opening with a joke that went something like "When travelling, at border control theofficer asks 'Occupation'? I say no, just a holiday".

Wearing a dress inscribed "Non Stop Feminist" and "My body is a battleground", apparently echoing the words in artist Barbara Kruger's1989 piece 'Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)' - a visual commentary on women's rights over reproduction and the continued feministstruggle - she has an aura of rebellion and delivered a mandate based on living and acting outside the parameters of what she described asslow inert governments. She cited technology as a tool for rebellion and free speech, which seems refreshingly simple after a day of high-concept tech and rampant futurism (not a complaint, it's just a welcome grounding moment to think of the here and now and reflect onwhere we are).

Reflecting on the talks and ideas shared today by the world's game changers and askers of questions most of us have never come close tocontemplating (until now), it strikes me how readily members of the art, architecture, science and technology communities collaborateacross disciplines. A chemist working with a chef at Noma, artist Eyal Gever collaborating with NASA on art in outer space, architectsworking with chefs to develop concepts for buildings and landscapes based on food, and the greatest thing is, the sum of the parts is richer,more surprising and arguably more legitimate for having sought beyond the boundaries of its own discipline. It makes me wonder; why isn'tthe fashion industry more eager to collaborate with those from other disciplines - scientists, architects, engineers? The idea of legitimacy is acomplex one, but it does seem that having outside input and therefore sharing credit for the design and presenting a collective rather thansingular 'vision' is something fashion designers and perhaps the industry at large is very uncomfortable with. In fashion, the CreativeDirector/Design Director is seen to possess the singular vision and takes all credit, making collaboration from an equal (and opposite)professional seemingly unwelcome. I feel fashion's the poorer for it. You only have to look at the discomfort and awkwardness of the currentFashTech/wearables offering to see that the fashion and technology industries are not really collaborating yet. The most innovative stridesbeing made in the fashion industry are in sportswear brands like Nike with their groundbreaking "Flyknit" trainers, which are a fusion ofshoe design, creative coding, digital industrial knitting and engineering. For all the hype about 'creativity and innovation' in the fashionindustry, the visible and lauded designers aren't leaping into the future, innovating or really questioning what is possible and tryingsomething new. They are not ready, or willing, to take the collaborative steps to do so, it appears. The open source aspect of science andtechnology is a practice fashion could benefit from. How do we learn and grow if we don't share and question what we do? How do we solvecomplex problems when only looking within the realms of what we already know rather than seeking the perspective and skills of otherprofessions?

As I finish writing this article I get confirmation that Hussein Chalayan has agreed to an interview with me to discuss his contemporarydance collaboration at Sadlers Well, Gravity Fatigue and his work as a fashion designer. So I'll prepare to eat all of the last paragraph'swords, thankfully!

Nadezhda closes Wired 2015 with a world exclusive of the new Pussy Riot music video for "Refugee In" shot at Banksy's Dismaland.

And with a hop and a skip, she's off!

Originally posted on Techstyler.fashion

Follow me: Twitter @Thetechstyler and Instagram @techstyler

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