Saving food from the refrigerator

Copyright jihyun ryou

Today most fridges are filled with stuff that would last just as long and probably would taste a lot better if it was never lost in the back of the fridge. They are expensive air conditioned parking lots for what Shay Salomon called "compost and condiments."

That's pretty much my fridge. Is there another way? In an article on TreeHugger that stops juuuust short of declaring war on refrigeration, Lloyd Alter promos the work of the Korean artist  Jihyun Ryou, who has some pretty cool, minimalist designs for devices aimed at replacing the role of the refrigerator. The key is to understand what food is, how it works, and the changes it undergoes as it ages. 

Yes, lines like ""we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator" grate; what's wrong with handing responsibility for things we care about off to technology? And it's also a bit annoying that it is only at the end that we are reminded that these designs "are artworks, not consumer products." That's part of a long-standing pattern in authenticity-mongering, of rejecting not just the technological, but the mass-produced or commonplace of any sort. It is generally obnoxious that the opposite of a crude technology has to be some haute-artisanal objet d'art.

But still. It's pretty cool.

Thanks to Jeffrey Mackie for the link.