_ daitioi
tag: [metariallab] [phygital] [digi]
date: 20211128
classification: metarial experiment
team: Yixuan Cai
weight: 159,309 kb
A piece of steak is digitally disassembled, reorganized through a computational template, and reconstructed as a new material object. Its surface carries the textures of marble and cloth; its geometry begins to behave less like food than architecture. Yet it remains unmistakably a piece of steak.
The reconstructed steak is served on a Chinese porcelain plate with fried garlic, fresh rosemary, and a Pantone color card. Culinary presentation, digital modeling, material sampling, and visual calibration are compressed into a single image. Objects normally belonging to different systems of representation are treated as though they were equally measurable, editable, and interchangeable.
Rather than using digital tools to reproduce an existing object faithfully, the experiment asks what happens when software becomes an unreliable material intermediary. Texture, mass, color, scale, and representation begin to drift apart. The steak can resemble marble without becoming stone; it can acquire the surface of cloth without becoming fabric.
The project treats this discrepancy as productive. The digital model does not simply describe matter; it introduces another set of conditions through which matter can be reorganized, misread, and reconstructed. Texture, mass, scale, and representation drift apart without fully replacing the physical object. It can resemble marble, behave like cloth, and grow like a plant. It remains a piece of steak.
The project treats this discrepancy as productive. The digital model does not simply describe matter; it introduces another set of conditions through which matter can be reorganized, misread, and reconstructed. Texture, mass, scale, and representation drift apart without fully replacing the physical object. It can resemble marble, behave like cloth, and grow like a plant. It remains a piece of steak.
