What’s Cooking Grandma?

Human Beans

Imagine being able to view videos of the grandmothers’ of the world sharing the recipes and techniques they’ve spent their lives perfecting. Human Beans aim to popularise a new genre of documentary video clip - the ‘Grandma Recipe’. They want to catalyse the mass documentation of Grandmothers’ cooking their special recipes in their own kitchens.

Human Beans are encouraging people to upload their own videos to: www.whatscookinggrandma.net

Alongside these fi lms are prototype ‘Grandma Players’ - a new kitchen appliance (based on a modifi ed jam jar). These are designed to record Grandma’s instructions and the sound of her cooking - so you can play her back in your own kitchen and cook along with Grandma .

Human Beans create provocative concepts. They make fi ctional products by hacking commercial culture and design new services by working with real people. Their work is disseminated through spam, media, shop shelves and exhibitions. Human Beans is a collaboration between advertising creative and designer Mickael Charbonnel and design strategist Chris Vanstone. Their work was recently included in the ‘HearWear’ exhibition at the V&A, London and ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ at MoMA, New York.

www.whatscookinggrandma.net www.humanbeans.net

What’s Cooking Grandma? Human Beans, 2006.

What’s Cooking Grandma?

Human Beans, 2006.

Technologies which were once bleeding-edge and the domain of professionals are now commonplace and affordable. This democratisation of technology is fuelling the development of new forms of literacy. In this project Human Beans explore the potential to connect the last generation of British women who stayed at home and cooked for their families with the YouTube generation. In creating a new genre of video clip, they want to leverage the potential for self-produced media content of cultural signifi cance.