We presented a lecture and gave a hands-on workshop at IdeasFest 2023: Food. Eat. Secure. Sustain, hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Art, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 16-19 Feb 2023. The NTU CCA IdeasFest is a platform to enable critical exchange of ideas and encourage thinking “out of the box” by linking academic and artistic communities. This year we shared and engaged in experiential learning projects through workshops, site visits, seminars, screenings, participatory projects, and a conference.
The focus of this year’s weekend-long conference was on understanding ways to encourage sustainable food systems and practices. For example, in our panel, two scientists shared their research about growing microalgae with the by-products of tofu, specifically liquid soya whey and soya pulp. Microalgae is a high source of protein and loaded with vitamins and minerals. Also on our panel was a Malay artist who reflected on his childhood growing up in a fishing community. He discussed salmon as a class symbol in Southeast Asia and the impulse to design the color of food, i.e., red for salmon.
Our own two projects were on food in the media, one a lecture and the other a workshop.
Lecture: Reporting on Singapore’s Innovations of Cultivated Meat
We gave a lecture in relation to our research around food and language with a case study of Singapore, the world’s first to approve commercial sale of cultivated meat, or meat that is grown in a lab. We highlighted research findings about our analysis of the Singapore media and its discourse on future food and what to eat, how, and why.
Our presentation examined how cultivated meats are made newsworthy through language and what values are conveyed. Focusing on The Straits Times, Singapore’s primary media source, we examined articles published between 2019-2022 and identified news values and themes of Positivity, Impact, Proximity, Eliteness, and Superlativeness, which construct a sociocultural understanding of novel foods as positive, innovative, and profitable.
We discussed how these values and themes may motivate social and personal mobilization of food choices by placing trust in the government and science technology.
Workshop: How Food Media Affect What We Eat
For the workshop, we asked participants to reflect on food information in the media and identify what influenced their food choices and attitudes. Food advertising is everywhere (e.g., billboards, magazines, tv, radio, social media ads), so we asked participants to think about their favorite advertising features and how the ad affected their purchases.
We discussed with participants about the power of branding and marketing in food advertising, such as a McDonald’s ad. We distributed worksheets that had participants draw their favorite ad, write down what appealed to them, and evaluate which sources of information influence them the most. A fascinating discussion arose about McDonald’s with the international participants sharing cross-cultural differences from their homelands: Singapore, Germany, India, Malaysia, and the US.
