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MaDe Participant
Name

Mimi Rook Vaughan

Material
Apéritif
Nationality
Canadian
Classification
Vegetable
Workshop
Barcelona
Category
Industry
Profile

I am a recent graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD University) in Toronto, Canada. With a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design, I am spending the year traveling through Europe, while living in Barcelona- looking for inspiring internships and workshop opportunities to further my love and knowledge about design, materials, and innovation in the field of architecture. Currently trytrytry.studio, the multidisciplinary creative collective I co-created, finished its first interactive audio visual installation for Nuit Blanche in Toronto thispast October 5th.

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Project Information
Material Qualities
Color: Olive, earth-brown, cream.
Soft / hard: STAGE1: soft, malleable. STAGE2: brittle, hard.
Shiny / matt: STAGE1: shiny, wet. STAGE2: molded, matt, dry.
Smells: STAGE1: smelt of both green and black olives, and coffee. STAGE2: Smelt of neutral molds, Never the smell of decomposing food.
Texture: STAGE1: wet, gelatinous, rubbery- yet lacking strength associated with rubber. STAGE2: dry, rough, light.
Others: STAGE2: as the pieces came in contact with the sun, they began to warp and shrink. Between stage1 and stage2, the pieces in this collection shrunk to 1/3 of its original size.
Material Recipe
Sample ‘cubes’ experimented with various quantities of food waste, studied through increments of each waste material (beeswax, green olives, black olive pits and coffee). Totalling 5 cubes per material, each recipe used a constant amount of agar agar, and glycerine, with multiplying amounts of food waste. the first cube of each composite utilized. 1 teaspoon of material, while the last cube utilized 1 table spoon.

- Grind food waste materials.
- Measure all materials.
- Mix and apply heat to all materials.
- Stir.
- Once material is boiling, prepare mould.
- Pour boiling composite into mould.
- Cool.
- Remove from mould.
- Dry for 1 week.
- After mold begins to grow, document growth, while continually drying.
Material Narrative
Experimenting with these materials, I focused on the rotting process of food waste. Documented over the course of two weeks, Apéritif began to change shape, colour and size- drawing attention to the short lifespan of fresh foods. We can compare this piece, Apéritif to the exhausted consumption of food in the developed world. With these bio-plastic experiments which have the potential to decompose, we begin to see the contrast between food- which decomposes at an exponential rate, and the items which we contain them with- plastics which take thousands of years to decompose. Apéritif was created as a commentary on our consumption, creating the objects which last forever out of the food we use them for.
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MaDe, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of The European Union, aims at boosting talents towards circular economies across Europe partnering with design and cultural institutions, Elisava, Ma-tt-er and Politecnico di Milano.

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