Week8 Digital Ecologies in Practice

Whorkshop,Digital Ecologies in Practice

Record the learning and feedback on the Digital Practice course in the first semester.

2025-11-21

In the Week 8 workshop focusing on digital ecologies, we visited Kirkgate market to observe digital ecologies in practice. Both tasks during the workshop led me to consider how digital devices might be used to portray food. In particular, I found myself wondering: how can the smell of food be conveyed digitally? In the first task, I used my phone to capture sensory aspects of various products—such as touch, smell, and sound. I began with a fluffy blanket, recording the sound it made when touched to evoke the viewers’ imagination, and also took a photo of it. Later, we entered a fish shop and took close-up photos of dead fish. These images could instantly remind viewers of a fishy odour. However, for those who have never encountered such a smell before, or for traditional foods unfamiliar to many viewers, such striking visuals may fail to communicate the intended sensory experience. In the second task, we were guided to listen to four jars containing spices and ingredients collected from the market. Each jar was connected to earphones via a rubber collector on the lid. The first jar was pink, filled with pink peppercorns and red cabbage, and smelled like pickled beetroot. Its sound reminded me of wood knocking together, and also of stirring a Japanese milk bubble cake inside a bottle—a sound often used in ASMR sleep-aid live streams. The second jar was brown, smelled like coffee, and produced a sound similar to digging sand on a beach. The third jar was yellow, smelled like preserved Sichuan pickle, and its sound brought to mind stepping on dry leaves. The final jar was dark green, smelled like Chinese medicated oil, and made no sound at all. If asked to describe or imitate the sounds and smells of these jars, I would use the descriptions above. However, our group had differing interpretations of the sounds and smells from these jars. It was noticeably easier to capture the sounds digitally than the smells, just as it was easier to describe them verbally. We could not rely on video, photo, painting, or similar media to convey the scents of these jars. Even the newest technology, which attempts to replicate smell by composing chemical reagents, has limitations—since it is trained on datasets shaped by subjective human judgment.