What is Culinary Sensography?

Culinary Sensography is a technique that allows a graphical expression of the sensations you experience as you eat a meal.

Basically the idea for Culinary Sensography came from a fusion of data visualisation, computer generated art and great cuisine.

The project can be followed on the Dos Cielos website, where you can see the sensographs of each of the dishes on the restaurant menu created by diners using the Culinary Sensograph.

An interactive online and offline experience

Several elements are used to create a sensograph:

The Culinary Sensograph: an interactive appliance located in the Dos Cielos restaurant used by clients to input the sensations they experience while eating one of the dishes from the menu.

The system generates shapes depending on the input of the customer and adds in the colours from an image of the dish to create a unique image.

How a Sensograph is created:

The environmental sensor: an appliance that measures the environment activity in the dining area where the customer ate and sends real time data to the Culinary Sensograph.

The Dos Cielos website:where the resulting sensograph is generated in real time.

Memories, flavours, textures, sensations and emotions

To create a Culinary Sensograph, objective parameters defined by touch and taste are considered along with more subjective perceptions derived from the emotions and sensations we feel as we eat.

Eating produces a number of immediate and basic experiences, generated by the stimulation of the senses: cold, hot, sweet or crunchy are some of the sensations produced by touch and taste.

But there are also other kinds of more subjective experiences including emotions and memories.
So, a sweet, hot and crunchy dish might remind us of our grandma which in turn makes us happy.