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The project features a shiny robot, spoons filled with different kinds of paste, and a human “slave”. A “slave” (as the artists label their human helper) is unnamed and silent, who’s function is to serve the robot spoons of paste for each new participant. The robot is attached to the wall and equipped to recognize your facial features, pick up a spoon and move the spoon of paste towards your mouth. The robot has a video camera to live stream or record the interaction from the robot’s perspective as it feeds the brave visitors.

Simon Laroche, artist and teacher, he creates installations, audio and video performances, robotic and body art works. He has developed a critical point of view on the hybridization and development of various biological, artificial and social systems. Simon Laroche teaches Electronic Arts at Concordia University and collaborates on theatre, fashion design, dance and cinema productions. His work has been presented in Asia, Europe, South and North America and in the Middle East.

David Szanto is exploring the material-discursive practices of food and gastronomic sciences. His aim is to better understand the systemic, intra-active relationships between humans, food, and the processes that frame the experience of eating, which is at once a mundane act and a magnificently complicated daily performance. As a researcher in a field that does not yet wholly exist, David’s work takes an experimental, research/creation-based approach that includes theory and practices from the realms of design, ecology, complex systems, chemical physics, and cooking. Having previously taught at Concordia University and l’Université du Québec à Montréal, he is currently professor-at-large and director of the Eco-Gastronomy Project at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.