Ensemble is an edible exhibition first presented at Dutch Design Week 2025: five artists, five short films, and a five-course meal. A table-top experience where food becomes a medium to explore narratives connected to current trends and critical questions in the field of Food Design.

In a context where artificial intelligence is increasingly entering the most intimate spheres of everyday life, we questioned what technology brings to gastronomy, and what might be lost when culinary practices become automated.

Developed in collaboration with chef and designer Natalia Meynard Solano, the speculative project Grandmas vs. Technology, proposes a fictional yet deeply meaningful conversation between an artificial intelligence and a grandmother. Two radically different forms of knowledge confront each other: one rooted in embodied memory, care and tradition; the other driven by data, algorithms and optimization.

Exploring how grandmothers work with seasonal ingredients, allowed us to reconnect with ancestral culinary knowledge and question whether and how these practices can, or cannot, be translated through artificial intelligence.

The culinary outcome of this dialogue is a dessert that embodies this dialogue, representing the dichotomy between the traditional recipes of a Sicilian grandmother and the technologies of artificial intelligence. It is a hybrid creation shaped by memory and algorithm, blending tradition with contemporary creativity.

Rather than offering answers, Grandmas vs. Technology opens up a space for critical reflection:

Whose taste memories shape a dish when we co-create with artificial intelligence?
Whose knowledge is amplified, and whose is displaced?
Can a disembodied intelligence truly participate in the sensory, emotional and affective dimensions of cooking?
What is gained and what is lost when embodied expertise meets algorithmic logic?