National Bitter Melon Council

September 18 and 19, 2004

Video Survey at the Mills Gallery
June 17- July 31, 2005

The National Bitter Melon Council conducted a survey using 2 curcurbits grown in the Berkeley Street Community Garden, a community garden located in Boston’s South End neighborhood in Boston, MA. These two curcurbits were the sweet tasting honeydew melon and the bitter flavored Asian gourd Bitter Melon. The survey was a blind taste test of each curcurbit. The survey did not take the form of verbal Q&A. Instead, it was a facial expression survey of individual responses to two flavors (bitter & sweet) captured in the custom made tasting booth that allowed us to use digital video to document these facial signals. It is the collection of expressions responding to the sense of taste.

The survey was presented as a two-chanel video installation with a loop of ‘sweet’ expressions playing next to a loop of ‘bitter’ ones on a second monitor. You cannot see the participants before or after the taste – only their reaction to the food in their mouths. In this way, the end result has no context to food they tasted. For us, the piece is the collected memories of the specific experience that all tasters shared, but other viewers can also make some association with their own experience without tasting it.

Taste tests are used by marketers to influence consumers to change their preferences toward their brands. Their impressions of the products are collected and evaluated based on questions and examination of physical responses that reveal preference and opinion. We at the NBMC had no interest in preference-based and market-driven taste tests. Instead, we used the the taste-testing model of the Bitter-Sweet Tasting Event to create portraits of the community. This event cataloged the wide-range of physical reactions to the unique Bitter Melon bitterness when the event is held in specific neighborhoods in Boston.

These videos were presented side-by-side in a two-channel video installation at the Mills Gallery from June 17 to July 31, 2005.