AL GRANO: Augmented-Cereals

AL GRANO: Augmented Cereals
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Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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“Al Grano: Augmented-Cereals”
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AL GRANO: Augmented Cereals is an art, science and technology installation in public space.

This is an Augmented Reality work in which consumers interact with the work via smartphone in a supermarket breakfast cereal aisle, using an Augmented Reality app (Aurasma).

In absence of comprehensive labeling of foodstus (and because breakfast is the most important meal of the day), I created a project to help consumers learn more about what they eat. Using their smartphones and my app, they scan cereal brands and find out which contain Genetically Modied corn.

The close-up smartphone documents show the image of a domesticated seed from Mexico emerging as “aura” over the cereal box. The seed is electronically etched with text extracted from “Men of Maize” - a seminal Latin American novel that speaks to ill effects of agribusiness’ exploitation of human and natural resources.

I use food as material and as subject to address ecological health and food safety issues. The focus is maize in Mexico (world center of biodiversity of corn) and its genetic avatars (produced in the USA by Monsanto, Pioneer, etc.).

I target breakfast as the meal that sets children off to school and adults off to work in an installation made up of cereal brands that contain GM corn, and my own brand of healthy ‘Comestibles.’

Visitors use their smartphones and an app to scan the products and view images and texts that address the politics of what we eat.

AL GRANO is the overarching title of a series of related works in a variety of computer controlled media that I develop and exhibit since 2010. They have been supported by grants from the Robert Heinecken Trust, the Canada Council for the Arts, and by a national Endowment for the Arts Fellowship at MacDowell Residency.

These are the projects produced under the "AL GRANO" umbrella:
AL GRANO: Augmented Cereals (interactive - public space)
AL GRANO: Corn Regime (film short)
AL GRANO: Crop Cropping (interactive app)
AL GRANO: Hack (glitched, or corrupted digital photos of GM corn)
AL GRANO: Injection-Infection (sculptures produced with a 3D printer)
AL GRANO: Sugar Daddy (looped video installation)

In depth articles about the project have been published in “Revue d’Esthetique” (France), in “ISEA” (International Symposium of Electronic Art, 2011 and 2015), and in Leonardo Journal, Art, Science and Technology”, MIT Press (DOI-2016)

Pat Badani