Project Nourished is a virtual reality project that hacks each of your senses to provide you with a unique food experience.
The only limit is your imagination. It sounds like science fiction, but in reality the technology takes a backseat to the human experience. If all meals alone were like this, we’re all going solo.
Eat anything you want
Project Nourished allows participants to eat anything they want, without consequences. This sounds appealing enough in theory. You could, for instance, enjoy a meal at the world’s best restaurant at a fraction of the price, and without having to worry about caloric intake. But the real magic happens when you let your imagination roam free. Because the technology interacts with and essentially takes over all of your senses, there is no limit to the experiences it can simulate. It allows you to experience not just food that is out of reach, but also food that is deemed impossible.
Not about the technology
When looking at Project Nourished, it is easy to focus on the amazing, cutting edge technology. At first glance it seems like a fascinating toy, or a limitless creative toolbox, but the people behind Project Nourished have a much greater vision. To them, the technology is nothing more than a tool for creating positive and meaningful experiences. Founder Jinsoo An: ‘The experiences we’re developing go beyond enhancing dining experiences to encompass things like therapy, prototyping, and testing.’ The technology is there to eliminate restrictions, erase boundaries, and provide a renewed focus on the fundamentally social experience that is eating food.
‘At Project Nourished, we look at people’s interactions that are often disguised or overlooked ... we try to figure out how to create a more positive or meaningful experience using technology.’ -Jinsoo An.
Reconnect
What Project Nourished is really about is (re)forging connections. It can reconnect people with each other, by making it feel like two people are sharing a meal even though they’re thousands of miles away. Reconnect people with food, by allowing a person with allergies or intolerances to experience that which they are biologically unable to. And to reconnect people with themselves, by eliminating all distraction and emphasizing and elevating the core values of food. Think of astronauts in the lonely, cold vacuum of space experiencing a meal as if they were back home with their family. In its own way, Project Nourished is solving problems most people never knew existed.