Social Design Project 1

For the first project in Social Design, we were supposed to work with a DIY/ Guerrilla art tactic. I decided to do my project on consumption. We consume a lot in our daily lives, lots of it is unnecessary and quickly thrown away. I narrowed the focus down to consumption of food and specifically raising awareness of how much choice we have regarding nutrition in America, and the choices that people make regarding food. In most of the world, rice is a staple if not the staple of diets. You can live on rice, it certainly isn't the healthiest choice, but it is an abundant grain and many people depend on it. I found a great site- FreeRice that donates rice, and has some great information on what you need. According to them, 400 grams of rice will give you 2 meals a day. They of course recommend adding other ingredients to get more balanced nutrition. I took that number and measured it out- about 2.25 C of uncooked rice. 

My project had 2 parts. One is takeout containers that are filled with the rice and have a slip of paper that says "This is enough food to feed you for one day. How much do you consume?". I sealed these containers with "free food" stickers and both put them in the food cases at the cafe (then photographed) and then left them just before lunch stacked underneath the microwave in the art building. Hopefully people will take them and think about their choices. As of an hour later, 2 of the containers are gone, the other 2 have been opened.

The second part was packaging the rice in vellum envelopes such as those you see food packaged in at cafes, and printing on the envelopes- This is all the food you need for a day. I put these into the food displays at the Art Cafe (Thanks to the wonderful ladies there and Liz (my partner in crime for this)!) and photographed them among all the muffins, donuts, and chips.