Soylent Beige: The Middle Gray of Taste

The title sequence for Mary Harron’s 2000 film American Psycho—a blood-like sauce drizzling onto white plates—neatly triangulates the abstract corporate appetites under discussion here. See →.

Abigail Fuller made comments to this effect while participating in a panel at the Coffiest Cafe in downtown Los Angeles, September 25, 2016.

Rob Rhinehart, “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Mostly Harmless, archived at →.

See Arik Levy’s website →.

OkFocus has also done website work for Nike and an online/Tumblr-based art auction for Phillips, among dozens of other branding projects. See Karen Archey, “Review: Ryder Ripps,” Frieze 170, April 2015 →.

With the exception of a handful of hunter-gatherer microcultures. See Sean Raspet interviewed by Anicka Yi, “Why I Drool,” The Lonely Samurai Podcast, May 28, 2014 →. See also “Scents and sensibility,” The Economist, January 18, 2018 →.

The uniforms, designed for the occasion by Nhu Duong, resembled space suits as much as work wear.

Quoted in Joel Kuennen, “The Matter of Molecular Practice: An Interview with Sean Raspet,” Artslant, June 23, 2016.

Molecules meant to “represent” abstract ideas of food and milk, the bases of adult and infant life, were “provided at approximately 0.1% in Soylent™ vehicle.” See the Swiss Institute press release →.

See Lucy Chinen, “Corbusier’s Kitchen” →.

Copy by Laurie Pressman, vice president of Pantone, printed on the base of a limited edition of one hundred Technical Milk and Technical Food canisters.

“Soylent 1.5 Has Arrived,” Soylent Blog.

Rob Rhinehart interviewed by Steven Colbert, The Colbert Report, June 11, 2014 →.

“Soylent 1.4 Begins Shipping Today,” Soylent Blog.

“Sean Raspet in conversation with Ceci Moss,” Cura →.

See the macronutrient overview on the Soylent website →.

The formula remains open source. See → and →.

John Zelek, “How to Design a Bottle,” Soylent Blog.

“I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant. Because he was the first to criticize the means itself of criticism, I conceive of Kant as the first real Modernist. The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it.” Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” 1960. Available at →.

See Sean Raspet’s artist page for the 9th Berlin Biennale →.

See →.

Cofounded with Lucy Chinen, Mariliis Holm, and Dennis Oliver Schroer. See →.

Dena Yago, “On Ketamine and Added Value,” e-flux journal 82 (May 2017) →.

“Sean Raspet in conversation with Ceci Moss,” Cura 24 →.

Sarat Maharaj, “Unfinishable Sketch of ‘An Unknown Object in 4D’: Scenes of Artistic Research,” L&B (Lier en Boog) Volume 18: Artistic Research, eds. Annette W. Balkema and Henk Slager (Rodopi, 2004), section 0014.

A. E. Benenson, “More of Less,” Art in America, February 2017 →.

Eunsong Kim and Maya Mackrandilal, “The Freedom to Oppress,” contemptorary, April 19, 2016 →.

Mark Fisher, “SF Capital,” Transmat: Resources in Transcendent Materialism (2001); Steven Shaviro, No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism (University Of Minnesota Press, 2015).

See Julie Earle-Levine, “In the Kitchen with Jackson Pollock,” T Magazine, March 24, 2015 →.

And yet a 2018 web ad for Soylent reads: “Gyms have germs. Soylent has nutrients.”

See the Soylent FAQ →.