Data Cuisine started as the Open Data Cooking Workshop in Helsinki, September 2012. We are interested in further editions in other cities, expressing local data with local food, with the help of a local chef. Get in touch in case you are interested!

From learning how to chop properly…

… over plating …

.. and the food actually tasted delicious, too!

But, of course, in the end it all boils down to the data dishes! So if you want to see how facebook friendship networks can be captured in shrimp cocktails or how foreigners spice up Finland, make sure to check out the results of the Open data Cooking Workshop Helsinki.

The day kicked off with an introduction by Susanne Jaschko, introducing the basic theme and idea of the workshop. Miska Knapek established a brief overview of open data, especially the Finnish scene (pdf of the presentation). Moritz Stefaner followed with a presentation of the data visualization aspects, introducing “culinary variables” and a few tricks (pdf). Our culinary expert Antti Nurkka closed the opening presentations round with his perspective on how to combine and create flavors (pdf).

Every participant brought an ingredient of personal relevance, which we used for the introduction round. So we had a full table with lentils, rice, polenta, black olives, olive oil, ceps, bananas, papaya,  mango, limes, blueberries, thyme, oregano, cumin, avocado, pickled cucumbers, condensed milk, and camomile tea…

After that, we distributed cards with ingredients and possible visualization topics, in order to facilitate quick creation of ideas and to get into the groove of thinking about representing information with food.

Quickly, people started sketching, brainstorming, and discussing ideas. After now everybody has gone shopping for ingredients, we are much looking forward to see what will be cooked tomorrow, when we all go to the big kitchen!

The preparations for the first Open Data Cooking workshop are in full swing, and we are very excited to see how it will turn out! It will take place in Helsinki, Sep. 15–16, 2012 — produced by Pixelache and organized by Susanne Jaschko from prozessagenten, in collaboration with data visualization expert Moritz Stefaner,  information designer and open data connaisseur Miska Knapek and culinary innovator Antti Nurkka.

The basic premise for the workshop is to explore food as a form of information expression. What if a fish soups taste is based on publicly available local fishing data? Or what a pizza would be like if it was based on Helsinki’s population mix? Hard to imagine? Look at a few reference projects we collected already to get inspired.

Especially those of us who are coming from a graphics background with your old visual variables, we are now very excited to explore the capabilities of culinary variables!

We will use this website to document the results of the workshop, so make sure to come back to check out the results!