Event 1: "Invisible Ingredients: Unveiling the Science of Processed Foods"

 This exhibit featured multiple advertisement artworks for certain chemicals/preservatives used in processed foods to create their unique textures, viscocities, and appearances. The work was catching and whimsical, inviting like advertisements were but the content couldn't help but leave viewers with a sense of uneasiness about their food. I was astonished by how this flurry of complicated and scientific terms were just small components in making sure that food for consumers is as appealing as possible. The exhibit makes note that "the health impacts of highly processed foods are increasingly ringing alarm bells in medicine and epidemiology, and the environmental footprint of these industrialized systems of production becomes ever more evident" (UCLA Art | Sci Center). 

I found this piece with nature's inconsistencies and eggs interesting particularly pertaining to consumerism in modern society. I thought back to CP Snow's work about the separation of the Two Cultures brought to attention the socioeconomic disparities caused by the Industrial Revolution (Vesna Part 1) and how some similar concepts could be thought of now with preservatives in food, where consumers will only accept a certain standard for what they are paying for. This allowed proccessed foods to grow in popularity for those across society and adds a layer of inaccessibility to food because of normalized apperance standards. It brings me to further insight that food is considered an art in many ways through its appearance and cultural significances across the world, and this exhibit highlights the way that science has melded with this in a negative way and joined the intersectional triangle between art, science, and technology (Vesna , Toward and Third Culture). 

These two pieces stuck out to me for their cartoon-like appearances and how they are seemingly positive until you realize their content. The exhibit description notes that these pieces were once satirical: meant to be terrifying for the average consumer, and only for the eyes of lab workers. However, in modern days, many don't blink an eye to processed groceries and have grown accustomed to them, which makes these ads even more terrifying as they reveal aspects of everyday food that were artificially manufactured even when we can't see or taste them. This exhibit really prompted me to think about what is actually going into my body and if society will ever reach a point as to be able to allow us to detect these invisible substances in what we consume. 

UCLA Art | Sci Center. "Exhibition opening and LASER talk – 'Hot Cling, Shear Magic, and the Mouthfeel of Capitalism: Images From the History of Ultra Processed Foods'." Sustainability at UCLA, 10 Apr. 2024, www.sustain.ucla.edu/event/exhibition-opening-and-laser-talk-hot-cling-shear-magic-and-the-mouthfeel-of-capitalism-images-from-the-history-of-ultra-processed-foods/.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577014. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.

Vesna, Victoria. “TwoCultures part1.” YouTube, YouTube, 30 Mar. 2012, https://youtu.be/VNI7dF3DIAM

Photographs are all taken by Kaylee Tran, original author of this blog.