Impetus
I am creating a short character-based narrative of a female character that has to make a choice between dining alone at home or in a restaurant. Leah, the main character, had plans to go out for dinner with her friend, but at the last minute her friend tells her that she can’t make it tonight. Leah finds herself trying to make a decision between going back home to her couch and her comfortable sweat pants or going to the restaurant to sit on an uncomfortable stool. The problem at home is the amount of food she will be eating while watching TV, whereas at the restaurant, it is the perception that people are watching her that bothers her tremendously. She is motivated to go to the restaurant because she is already dressed for the occasion. The character struggles between being anxious dining alone in a public setting and overeating comfort food when at home alone.
Everyone eats, every culture has it’s own eating habits and traditions. Even if the anxiety of eating alone in public space isn’t something that everyone can relate to, everyone can sympathizes with a woman not feeling comfortable dining alone. Still the story speaks more to single young adult women.
My thesis concept emerged from writing and rewriting my likes and dislikes. I started focusing on food, and on the different cuisines I was fortunate to experience living in New York City. Soon after I realized the one thing I tend to avoid everyday; eating alone in a restaurant, more specifically dining alone. I started to notice that when I was eating alone I would be facing a TV, computer, or my cell phone; anything that doesn’t make me feel that I am alone. I started observing others who eat alone, and everyone behaves the same, they act busy, unapproachable and hide behind their props.
Before moving to New York City, the experience of eating alone in a public space was an experience I had never been exposed to, and something that hadn’t crossed my mind. I had always traveled with people or to meet people, family and friends were always around. The two reasons why I never had to eat alone are first, I grew up in a small city, where if I went out to a public space, often if not always, I would see someone I knew. Second, Mediterranean meals require hours of preparation, and eating together is a way of gratitude.
I moved to New York in the summer of 2008. When I went back home five months later for Christmas, I had gained more than twenty pounds, without even realizing. I was finally able to quit smoking, but with anxiety of eating alone, being busy all the time, the variety of cuisines so easily accessible, the new cold climate, I would be overeating at home alone all the time, and it was very unpleasant and unhealthy.
Through ridiculing a personal situation, am I trying to justify or inspire?
Working with the theme, eating alone, hasn’t changed from the beginning of the semester, but the concept has changed twice so far. My initial concept was to create character-based narratives that would use products designed for their specific psyches, for a specific setting. The second concept was a short narrative that tells a story of a character eating alone from a waitress’s perspective.
After sending out the storyboard and the story to some friends, the main response I got was that they didn’t understand why it was not okay to eat alone, it was the same issue that I was facing with my first iteration, what am I trying to communicate by making a commentary of social anxiety when eating alone in a public space? Why shouldn’t we be anxious? Why should we do it?
As I was writing my motivation for this thesis concept and describing why I don’t eat alone, and I realized that it is an issue because I ended up overeating and making unhealthy decisions when I was alone. It became clear, there is a reason why we should let go of anxiety that comes from a faultily perception that people are watching us, in my case the reason was overeating. Since most of us make the worse eating decisions when no one is watching, what I am trying to communicate with my thesis it for us to use this perception that people are watching us and use it to our own benefit.
My thesis has changed directions and I now feel that I have finally a concept that answers why I am exploring the mental unease of eating alone and the respond came from personal experience.
Character Backstory
Leah Peck was born in Florida, where she grew up till the age of 13, after that her family moved twice before she went to Boston University for undergrad. Although she was very sociable and it was still very difficult for Leah to adapt to the new environments, she gets attached to people, places and objects, and to overcome this discomfort she had the habit of biting her nails, and the tendency to find comfort in food.
She grew up in a family oriented and neighborly environment. Her older brother never had problems adapting, as a teenager he was very insensitive and teased her a lot.
She works in the marketing department at the advertising agency BBDO, she is single.
She is neat at work and sloppy at home. She always wears safe colors such as black, grey and beige. She’s scared to go out of the social norms.
She has the habit of always pulling down her shirt and pulling up her pants, a habit she picked up to hide her curves.
Her daily routine involves planning her daily chores, and trying to organize her life, he fails to go through with what she hopes to establish as a routine, especially like going to the gym, or to yoga classes she already paid for.
She loves pickles and Indian food, and always orders a dirty martini because she loves eating olives. She dislikes tomatoes.
She’s organized and likes to take photos of landscapes and unordinary things, she loves dogs, but doesn’t have the time at the moment to take care of one. She is shy and avoids taking risks.
She knows a lot of people but becomes socially awkward when she’s around strangers. She loves to go out with friends, but never goes out alone.
She dislikes un-analytical people, she is envious of adventurous people and is inspired by the bohemian lifestyle.
The Story (second iteration)
Narrative:
It’s 7PM on a New York night. Leah, 24, is leaving the office building, with a big smile on her face; she’s wearing a skirt, button down shirt, a blazer jacket and heels. She’s walking at fast pace. As she is about to get in the subway station, she gets a text message: ‘Hey babe, I’m still stuck at work; I won’t be able to make it for dinner tonight. I’ll see you Thursday with the girls.’
Disappointed with the content of the text message, she takes a few steps out of the subway stairs, and she calls the restaurant to cancel the reservation: “Spotted Pig, Karen speaking, please hold”.
She’s hungry and starts to wanders off and starts to visualize if she were to go alone to the restaurant, she could sit at the bar, order glass of red wine to stay warm, she would order the steak with the mixed greens, she would take small bites, and would take small sips of wine in between. She would then order the gelato for desert. She starts to see all the eyes around her watching her, how her phone would accompany her. Or, she could go home, get in he very comfortable sweats, and untie her hair. She would make a turkey sandwich with salad, and she would just eat the rest of her ice-cream. She would go back and forth to the fridge, and sit facing her TV.
‘Hello, thanks for holding, this is Karen, how can I help you.’
Lea looks at her clothes, the shoes with heels she suffered wearing all day because she had planned to go out.
‘Hi, I have a reservation under Lea, yes, It’s actually going to be only me… Thanks’
At the restaurant she is sitting on the bar waiting for her table, she hears the hostess shouting: ‘Leah, Leah, Party of One”
She puts her drink on the bar and puts a $20 dollar bill, and walks out of the restaurant feeling ashamed, when in fact no one is looking at her, hostess keeps calling her name as she exists.
Second Iteration on the Narrative – Theme
Theme and Subject: Social Anxiety and overeating when alone.
Problem: Choice between dining alone in a public setting and overeating at home.
Obstacles: At the restaurant, she will be sitting uncomfortable, feeling like she is the center of attention, that people are watching her and judging her. At home, she would overeat, and not break the habits of eating junk food while watching TV.
Solution/decision: She takes a step forward and decides to face what she fears to resolve an issue she’s been struggling with.
Twist: When she hears party of one, she is faced with her fear of loneliness and goes back to making the ‘wrong’ choice out of embarrassment and because of the faultily belief that people are judging her when no one is looking at her.
At the restaurant:
Central element: The eyes of others.
Sitting uncomfortably
Eating small bites
Work attire
Sipping red wine
Controlled amount of salad dressing
Controlled meal portion
One scoop of gelato
At home:
Central element: The fridge.
Sitting comfortably
Eating big bites
Lounge attire
Drinking soda
Uncontrolled pre-packaged salad dressing
Uncontrolled meal portion
Big ice cream bucket with chocolate sauce
ETC… Popcorn, chips, cheese, tea
Domains & Precedents
“One main message of food, everywhere, is solidarity. Eating together means sharing and participating. The word ‘companion’ means ‘bread sharer’… the immediate reason for most social feeding is that people simply like to eat with others… the importance of family mealtime continues to be recognized, even in contemporary United States, where the average nuclear family sits down together for only three meals a week.” 1
My thesis idea is to elaborate on the state of mental unease that some people face when eating alone. I want to create character-driven narratives that explore this anxiety by using objects from a survival-kit designed to distract oneself. I have classified my thesis into three primary domains; psychology, product design and linear narrative. The subfields are; social anxiety, critical design and character-driven narrative.
Living in a fast urban environment, we are constantly eating alone thus the feeling of loneliness is inevitable, Georg Simmel describes “the feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one finds himself physically alone, as when one is stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on a train, or in the traffic of a large city.” 2 In the article Urbanism as a Way of Life, Louis Writh argues that “frequent close physical contact, coupled with great social distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached individuals toward one another and, unless compensated for by other opportunities for response, gives rise to loneliness. The necessary frequent movement of great numbers of individuals in a congested habitat gives occasion to friction and irritation. Nervous tensions which derive from such personal frustrations are accentuated by the rapid tempo and the complicated technology under which life in dense areas must be lived.”3
One can’t ignore that the definition of loneliness has change, with new technologies we can choose to consistently be connected, and by doing so are we wasting the chances of new connections? Whether is it family or a church group, as human beings we need to feel part of a group, John Cacioppo believes “our species wouldn’t have survived without a cooperative social instinct. Nature is connection.’ 4
I consulted Steve Olsen, MEd, NCC, LPC about being anxious while eating alone in a public space. He told me that it was a faultily perception that people around focused on me. I mentioned that I generally try occupy myself with reading or using my cell phone, Olsen said that using such tools is called propping; a therapy belief system called Gestalt Therapy. When an anxious person uses props it is to shift their attention and distract themselves.
How can I create objects that act themselves as props or support those that we already use, to help the initiation of connections among the character and his surrounding?
Critical design is conceptual, non-commercial design, that make a commentary about a subject matter. Whether the designs of objects are made to investigate fantasies, desires, phobias and social behaviors. They are designed to be functional and very much concerned with aesthetics but useless, to create irony. Many designers do work of the sort, Dunne and Raby are the first that have labeled that into critical design. “Critical Design uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. There are many people doing this who have never heard of the term critical design and who have their own way of describing what they do. Naming it Critical Design is simply a useful way of making this activity more visible and subject to discussion and debate.” 5 When comparing the objects designed for everyday activities to the critical designed objects we notice the polished and perfection of the critical objects. We notice the one-of-kind attention to the design. Many critical designers are affiliated with the interaction design department at the Royal College of Art in London. Most of those designers work with electronics and technology.
Noam Toran, Objects for Lonely Men, 2001 is the main precedent to my thesis. His critical design projects are used for specific characters, they are not just the object as is but rather an object designed for a specific character that has a specific psychology. Objects for Lonely Men is a project about a character who is obsessed with Godard’s movie Breathless and he has a ‘kit’ with all the props that are present in the movie so that he can relive the actions of the movie.
Lauren McCarthy, Conversacube, 2010 is a cube-looking tool with the purpose of helping a social conversation, and on the other hand makes a commentary of our dependency on technology to have social interactions.
Fluxus kits, George Maciunas, containing works by many early Fluxus artists, 1960’s “These were either works made by individual Fluxus artists, sometimes in collaboration with Maciunas, or, most controversially, Maciunas’s own interpretations of an artist’s concept or score. Their purpose was to erode the cultural status of art and to help to eliminate the artist’s ego.” 6
Bendable Interior Objects by Form Us With Love, 2007 are Do-It-Yourself design that is flat, easy to transport. It is made from a sort of bendable mental that can be easily constructed by the consumer. The objects are home and office essentials.
Pet Plus by Alice Wang, 2006 are products designed to support the interaction between humans, their pet and the relationship between both. It helps make the companionship greater, in an attempt to eliminate the need of another human companionship by providing these products.
Help Remedies, 2009 are solutions to minor health issues, regardless of the health issue the remedy packages are designed to all look the same. They are easy to carry around.
I have been looking at past design projects, some are strictly critical and other are commercial. The projects below are either conceptually related to what I am trying to achieve for my thesis, or some are visually and efficiently the look-and-feel inspiration to my project.
Sika Boom
Sika Boom is a pre-pressurized, portable, one-component, polyurethane foam system applied in a bead form. Sika Boom expands and cures slowly to a semi-rigid, closed cell foam upon reaction with moisture, such as ambient humidity. It is designed for easy dispensing through a straw adapter that is included with each can.
Film Experiment
http://player.vimeo.com/video/17368606?color=dd4499
I directed this 10 min silent short of a woman using a kit that helps you keep an eye on your belongings when eating alone. The kit is a rough prototype that contains, glue, tape, a hanger and scrapping tools.
This experiment was for me to practice shooting, directing, editing and visualizing.
Questions
How to project the idea of the survival kit? (film)
Am I designing props, or am I designing things for props? (glue or bar rests)
Is it for male, female or both?
What is the name of the kit? (party of one) How many accessories in one kit? (party 4 one, 4 accessories in 1 kit)
What are the different kits? and why those situations? (survey)
What is the branding style and why?
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