Fruit makes us strong, it combats free radicals, it is nutrient-dense and it boosts brainpower. It is an essential part of our food routine and we are familiar with the way it affects our diet but how deep is our understanding when our knowledge about it, is not mainly focused on the benefits that it has on us? What is our current interaction with it? Are we just consumers? Growers? Researchers? Is there an alternative spectrum in which humans experiment differently with it?
These questions are behind the discourse of HOW RIPE DO YOU LIKE TO EAT YOUR 🍎🍌🍉🍐🍑🥑🥝 ? in which the understanding of the biological fruit processes, specifically in the ripening context, brings a reformulation of the actual interactive role between humans and fruit.
The lifecycle of plants follows a constant loop in which their growth path is in a biological constant change. One of the most relevant stages is the ripening phase, as the last step of its development. After that, the fruit only spoilage, and just before ripening is the final growth phase. In this process, ethylene, a gaseous-natural hormone produced by plants, plays a principal role. Even it is an organic part of the plant, due to its valuable action not only as a ripening hormone, it has been implemented as a human-source technique to manufacture, classify and assign what are the stages in which the fruits should ripen, also known as “the seven shades of ripeness” or “ripeness chart.
In which context has been this categorization formulated? Does it mean we have a limitation in terms of how to consume our fruit? Who makes this decision and to what does it relate? A reflection about the alternatives to decentralize fruit from a categorization process are a point to address and revaluate. How a more personalization of fruit could be achieved? Is its answer also related to the reformulation of the role between humans and fruits? The answers to these questions are the object of study in this project, in which a systematic thinking approach has been developed in three different stages:
→ BIOLOGICAL RIPENING PROCESS AS AN OBJECT OF STUDY
An individual deepening research is the starting point of a communal exchange succession. What could be a method to understand science without being scientific? Experimenting, trying, learning by doing with the extra support of experts in the topic. Understanding ripening as a biocommunication exchange, exploring the ways to manipulate the ‘’ripening hormone’’, learning about the growth patterns of fruit. The result? A whole archive of valuable knowledge is ready for being shared. Fig 277
Fig 277
→ RIPENING EXPERIMENTS IN A SOCIAL FRAMEWORK
Find the framework to address the topic to different people (Fig 278-281), give them the data resulting from your research, engage to make individual experiments with it and with familiar tools they could find in their households.
Fig 278 (DAE)
Fig 279 (Supermarket)
Fig 280 (Organic shop)
Fig 281 (Online)
The context of ''ripening work'' was detailed and given (Fig 282), from which numerous interpretations (Fig 283-285) got developed, where the skills, backgrounds, and thoughts from the people involved got portrayed in a series of ‘’ripening artifacts’’ (Fig 286). These objects can’t be considered scientific-based , but a form of “experimental research” designed to get people thinking about their impact when working with fruit, challenging them to take a new role with fruits far away from the one they are used to, as ripening facilitators.
Ripening facilitators, a new perspective in which humans get a relevant position in the biocommu-nicational exchange between fruits. When taking this role, not only a deeper understanding of how fruit respond to different human stimuli gets acknowledged, but also highlights the opportunity for how everyday objects, changing their general use and putting them in a new context, get a different meaning, getting them translated into materials, parameters, and techniques with a direct impact on how the fruit will develop.