2nd Workshop on The Future of Computing & Food

Satellite Workshop of IEEE VR 2019, co-sponsored by the ACM Future of Computing Academy (ACM-FCA), Ritsumeikan University and All Japan Food Association.

  • Organizers: Masahiko Inami, Marianna Obrist, Takuji Narumi, Carlos Velasco, Yuji Wada
  • Registration as a speaker of 10-min inspiration talk:
    • 15th Feb 2019 Submission Closed!
  • Registration as a participant:
    • 18th March 2019
  • Event Date:
    • 28th March 2019
  • Venue:
  • Contact: narumi [at] cyber.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

About this workshop

The human sense of taste and smell have become a target for interaction design, Virtual Reality (VR) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research [Spence et al. 2017]. The premise behind this is that most of our everyday life experiences are multisensory in nature and as such all the senses are potential interaction modalities. While fields such as sensory science, chemistry, biology, and molecular gastronomy have advanced our understanding on multisensory perception, the interactive experiences that can be created based on taste and smell remain widely unexplored within VR and HCI [Obrist et al. 2017]. We have only recently started to understand the dimensions and features of taste and smell for multisensory experience design [Obrist et al. 2016]. However, we still lack guidance on which of these are relevant to account for in multisensory interaction and experience design. Hence, in order to inform the design of future gustatory, olfactory, and ultimately multisensory interfaces/interactions we need to establish a more detailed understanding of the design space for taste and smell in relation to technology.

The goal of this event is to build, and follow up on, the “Future of Computing & Food Manifesto”. The Manifesto was the key outcome from the 1st “Future of Computing & Food” workshop that was a co-located with the AVI – International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces 2018, and co-organised by the ACM Future of Computing Academy. On 31st May 2018, a group of academics, practitioners, a Chef and local food producers gathered in Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy, to kickstart the co-creation of a Manifesto on the Future of Computing & Food and thus enable a healthy debate and an inclusive futurism. This Manifesto called every human being to think about how we position ourselves in the world in relation to food (past: from nature) and computing (future: built by humans). We specifically called upon technologists and innovators in the computing community designing the food systems of the future to

1. Make the invisible visible to enable learning and ensure transparency

2. Develop for fairness in algorithms and system optimization to remove in-equality

3. Design for multisensorial experiences to remind people about their full human capabilities

4. Allow for creative personalization and creative problem-solving with technology

5. Account for changes over time and in everyday life through intelligent adaptation

In this event, we go one step further and aim to address pressing questions on the intersection between technology and food, such as: How will the VR/AR technologies change our multisensorial eating experience? How will we design and innovate considering food/mouth/digesting system as an interface? How will the future computing landscape explore this interaction design? Group discussion aims to update/deepen the Manifesto, especially from the viewpoint of adopting AR/VR technologies to eating experience.

VENUE & EVENT FORMAT

This one-day satellite event of IEEE VR 2019 will take place in Koushinkan KS209, Kinugasa Campus, Ritsumeikan Univesrity, in Kyoto on March, 28th, 2019. The venue is near from famous Japanese Temples such as Ryoan-ji temple and Kinkaku-ji Temple.

The format will be a combination of

    • Two Keynotes
    • 10min Inspirational Talks
    • Spin-out Group work and Plenary Discussion
    • Tasting Event with local producers (Wa-gyu (Japanese beef), Ramen (Japanese noodle), Japanese Sake and more!) and multisensory experimentation

To encourage creative and critical thinking, we also foresee hands-on-experiences with emerging multisensory interfaces.

Registration

For 10min Inspiration Talks (up to 5 speakers) - Deadline: 15th Feb.

Submission closed.

Speakers also need to have a registration via the following link (peatix).

For attendees - Deadline: 18th March

Please register via peatix: https://fcf2.peatix.com/


Registration Category:

Regular Member (IEEE VR 2019 participant) 7,000 JPY

Student (IEEE VR 2019 participant) 4,000 JPY

Regular Member (Non-IEEE VR 2019 participant) 20,000 JPY

Student (Non-IEEE VR 2019 participant) 10,000 JPY

Program (tentative)

8:30 - 9:00 Registration @ Koushin-kan KS209 in Kinugasa Campus, Ritsumeikan Univ.

9:00 - 9:30 Introduction of Future of Computing & Food Manifest and this workshop

9:30 -10:40 10min Inspiration Talks (× 7 speakers)

10:40 -11:20 Keynote speech 1 by Yoshihiro Murata (Owner & Chef of Kikunoi)

11:20 -11:30 Break

11:30 -12:30 Group discussion 1

12:30 -14:30 Lunch break

14:30 -15:00 Keynote speech 2 by Kenichi Kato (Kyoto Nakasei Ltd.)

15:00 -15:30 Keynote speech 3 by Prof. Ramesh Jain (University of California, Irvine)

15:30 -15:45 Q&A and discussion with keynote speakers

15:45 -17:15 Group discussion 2

17:15 -17:30 Wrap up

17:30 -18:00 Walking to tasting session venue

18:00 -19:30 Tasting session @ Enchanted donkey (Mahou ni kakatta roba)

19:30-20:00 Closing Keynote (via teleconference system) by Jozef Youssef (Kitchen Theory)

Keynote speakers

Prof. Ramesh Jain (University of California, Irvine)

Ramesh Jain is an entrepreneur, researcher, and educator.

He is a Donald Bren Professor in Information & Computer Sciences at University of California, Irvine. His current research passion is in addressing health issues using cybernetic principles building on the progress in sensors, mobile, processing, and storage technologies. He is founding director of the Institute for Future Health at UCI. Earlier he served on faculty of Georgia Tech, University of California at San Diego, The university of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Wayne State University, and Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM, IEEE, AAAI, IAPR, and SPIE.

Ramesh co-founded several companies, managed them in initial stages, and then turned them over to professional management. He enjoys new challenges and likes to use technology to solve them. He is participating in addressing the biggest challenge for us all: how to live long in good health.


Kenichi Kato (Kyoto Nakasei Ltd.)

Kenichi (Ken) Kato is a Japanese butcher.

He is the fourth generation in a meat business family, and operates a boutique butcher shop, and a restaurant and department store deli in Kyoto, both featuring his specialty meats. The butcher shop, Kyoto Nakasei, is renown as a pioneer of dry-aged meat in Japan. It specializes in not only dry-aging technique, but also cattle breed and feed assessment, carcass quality evaluation, and dry-aged meat conditioning. Their strongest suit as butchers is matching the preferences of their clients with bespoke cuts based on their deep understanding of their clients's tastes and the unique flavor characteristics of each animal. It has been a personal life goal of Mr. Kato to be a bridge between the meat industry and meat science, and to this end he pursued a master’s degree of animal science at Colorado State University's Center for Meat Safety & Quality in 2008. He has been active in numerous meat science research projects since returning to Japan.


Yoshihiro Murata (Owner & Chef of Kikunoi )

To be announced.







Jozef Youssef (Chef & Founder of Kitchen Theory)

Jozef Youssef is the creative force behind Kitchen Theory. His years of experience in London’s most highly acclaimed Michelin star restaurants and hotels coupled with his passion for gastronomy, art and science all led to him establishing Kitchen Theory in 2010. Since then Youssef has published his first book; Molecular Gastronomy at Home, and is currently an associate editor at the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science. Youssef designs Kitchen Theory’s Gastrophysics Chef’s Table, corporate experiences and product ‘sensplorations’ , by combining his exceptional culinary skills with ongoing research into the scientific field of gastrophysics, carried out in collaboration with Professor Charles Spence, head of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Department. Most recently, Youssef has created the Gastrophysics Chef’s Table, at which he hosts 10 guests, who are set to experience the most multisensory chef’s table in London.


Tasting session

Ramen

by Ryukishin





Dashi (Japanese Soup Stock)

by Konbu Doi

Non-aged & Aged

Wa-gyu Beef

by Kyoto Nakasei





Sushi


Inspiration Talks

  • We eat first with our (digital) eyes: How Visual-Enabling Technologies Affect Food Evaluation

Olivia Petit (Kedge Business School)

  • Enchanting Your Noodles: A Gustatory Manipulation Interface by Using GAN-based Real-time Food-to-Food Translation

Kizashi Nakano (Nara Institute of Science and Technology)

  • Perception Tricks Inspiration for Reducing Food Intake using Food 3D Printer

Ying Ju Lin (Osaka University)

  • Bringing Gastronomic Experience to the next level with Distributed Reality

Ester Gonzalez-Sosa (Nokia Bell Labs)

  • Parameterizing Disgust

Kai Kunze (Keio Media Design)

  • Edible optics and its potential applications

Hiromasa Oku (Gunma University)

  • Interactive Cooking Simulator Based on Real-time Thermal FEM and a Future Supported Cooking

Fumihiro Kato (The University of Tokyo)

Organizers

Masahiko Inami, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Masahiko (Masa) Inami is a Professor in the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He is also directing the Inami JIZAI Body Project, JST ERATO. He proposed and organized the Superhuman Sports Society.

Marianna Obrist , University of Sussex, UK

Marianna is leading the Sussex Computer Human Interaction Lab, a research group dedicated to the investigation of multisensory experiences for interactive technology. The interdisciplinary SCHI Lab team explores tactile, gustatory, and olfactory experiences as novel interaction modalities. She is a member of the newly established ACM Future of Computing Academy.

Takuji Narumi, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Takuji is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. His research interests broadly include perceptual modification and human augmentation with virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. He invented a novel haptic display, olfactory display, taste display and satiety display by utilizing crossmodal interactions.

Carlos Velasco, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

Carlos' research focuses on crossmodal perception and multisensory experiences, in particular on crossmodal correspondences in the context of multisensory marketing, human-computer interaction, food and beverage, and experience design.

Yuji Wada, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Yuji is a Professor in the College of Gastronomy Management at Ritsumeikan University in Japan. He is a psychologist interested in human perception and behavior on food and eating, in particular how our cognitive system manages to process the information from our multiple sensory organs and other factors such as culture, stereotype, rumor etc in order to make decision about food matters.