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01/12WeÕll let you guys prophesyWe gonÕ see the future firstÐ Frank Ocean, ÒNikesÓTravis Diehle-flux journal #89 Ñ march 2018 Ê Travis DiehlSoylent Beige: The Middle Gray of TasteSoylent Beige:The Middle Grayof Taste03.12.18 / 18:16:37 EDT1.0The first shot of ChefÕs Table finds chef GrantAchatz standing before an abstract painting. ÒWewould go to art galleries,Ó he says in voice-over,Òand you would see these giant-scale pieces ofart, and I would always say, ÔWhy canÕt we plateon that?ÕÓ Cut to a top-down shot of a dinnertable. A rubbery cloth unrolls, left to right. Violinschime and arms clad in chefÕs whites dip spoonsinto little ceramic pots of sauce, brown and whiteand yellow, trailing skeins across the tabletop.1 Aversion of this Pollock-like Òsplatter platingÓserves as the opening title for the second andthird seasons of ChefÕs Table, as if to telegraphthrough this widely legible gesture a notion ofcreative genius: food can be art, too, and chefsartists.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊJack the Dripper of haute cuisine? Yes, andno. A star in the world of molecular gastronomy,Achatz is a particularly granular sort of chef. Hisrestaurant Alinea features chemically inflecteddishes engineered to produce beguiling effects.In his kitchen Ð which, the critics note, looks likea lab Ð Achatz and his crew realize such visionsas floating candy balloons, white beans servedon pillows of nutmeg-scented air, and mini pilesof edible rubble made of mushrooms and herbsand spritzed, graffiti-style, with carrot juice.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNods to fine-art and street-art formalismarenÕt what make AchatzÕs dishes art; rather, itÕsthe touches of genius that the auteur chef givesto edible matter that allow him to invoke amŽlange of artistic lineages. Art here is anabstract added value Ð an unnamable quality ofbeing-art, not immediately accounted for by thechemistry of the dishes and so requiring somesupplementary and unsubtle signification.AchatzÕs work is an extreme case of the dynamiccharacterizing most haute cuisine wherein theartistry and experience of the meal wildly exceedits nutritional value. Even the most perfecttomato wonÕt sell for 400, points out AbigailFuller, one ChefÕs Table director. But purŽe thatsame tomato, press and freeze it in the shape ofa strawberry, and you can charge whatever youwant.2ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, such a tastefully constitutedstrawberry still ÒtastesÓ (is flavored) like tomato.Achatz and his peers animate the oppositionbetween flavor and taste that organizes so muchaesthetic debate. Flavor is the brute recipe, thechemicals that so prosaically trigger our tonguesand noses in order to produce the moreephemeral, rarefied quality called taste. What is

02/12Film still from the promotional videoÊSoylent 2.0: Now Shipping.03.12.18 / 18:16:37 EDT

My mental performance is higher. My inboxand to-do list quickly emptied. I ÒgetÓ newconcepts in my reading faster than beforeand can read my textbooks twice as longwithout mental fatigue. I read a book on03.12.18 / 18:16:37 EDT03/12e-flux journal #89 Ñ march 2018 Ê Travis DiehlSoylent Beige: The Middle Gray of Tastetasteful is often derided as flavorless, minimal,and austere, while excessive or obvious flavoring(neon-orange cheese, ÒblueÓ- and ÒpurpleÓflavored drinks) is a sure sign of tastelessness,commonness, and vulgarity. Burping, farting, oreating Fritos in public are tasteless because theyrepresent a capitulation to the body and itscollection of instincts, and a correspondingbetrayal of the social. Displays of taste, bycontrast, reinforce the social against the bodilyinstincts that would deny its presence. AlongsideGreenbergÕs heroic Pollock is Pollock the cook,Pollock the dancer, and Pollock the alcoholic.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf the body, and by extension, eating is aproblem, haute cuisine proposes to solve thisproblem by refashioning the rote task of nutritionas a pleasurable, aesthetic experience. Theinstinctual, antisocial body is a source ofunfreedom from which the steady cultivation oftaste promises a flavorless escape. The vulgarnecessity of food is not so much denied astransformed, patronized, and adorned to theextent that flavor is once again woven upinextricably with taste.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is not the only solution. In 2014, RosaFoods released the first commercial version ofthe nourishing beige powder called Soylent. Thesolution it offers is the opposite of haute cuisine:instead of maximizing the aesthetic potential infood, it minimizes how much thought we devoteto eating. Soylent, says the copy next to its panelof nutritional information, is a product that isÒnot intended to replace every mealÓ but thatÒcan replace any meal.Ó For roughly 3 per fourhundred calories, Soylent succinctly fulfills thenutritional role of food, leaving you free to enjoyonly meaningful cuisine. In other words, onlytasteful meals need be concerned with flavor; foreverything else, thereÕs Soylent.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe triumph of taste is written intoSoylentÕs founding myth. Tired of subsisting onramen noodles and kale while his killer appfloundered at famed start-up incubator YCombinator, Rob Rhinehart applied an engineerÕsapproach to the problem of nutrition. The sci-fidream of complete, compact meals wasrediscovered, not in pill form, exactly, but as ablend of pulverized nutrients. Mix with water,drink, repeat. After four weeks of consumingnothing but Soylent, Rhinehart reported that hisÒquantitativeÓ health had improved across theboard, from body mass index to cholesterol tolipid counts. The qualitative results were moredramatic:Number Theory in one sitting, a DifferentialGeometry book in a weekend, filling up anotebook in the process. Mathematicalnotation that used to look obtuse is nowbeautiful. My working memory is noticeablybetter. I can grasp larger software projectsand longer and more complex scientificpapers more effectively. My awareness ishigher. I find music more enjoyable. I noticebeauty and art around me that I never didbefore. The people around me seemsluggish. There are fewer ÒumsÓ and pausesin my spoken sentences. My reflexes areimproved. I walk faster, feel lighter on myfeet, spend less time analyzing andperforming basic tasks and rely on myphone less for navigation. I sleep better,wake up more refreshed and alert andnever feel drowsy during the day. I stilldrink coffee occasionally, but I no longerneed it, which is nice.3Alongside boasts of increased focus andproductivity, RhinehartÕs self-assessmentemphasizes an appreciation for the beauty ofmath equations and a heightened sense of theart of the everyday. Peeling back and optimizinglow-level tasks, like nuking quesadillas, allowsfor higher-order cognition Ð math, music, art;culture. Against the dystopian vision of afoodless life, where workers gulp down fourhundred calories without leaving their cubicles,Soylent presents itself as a product that lets youprioritize what you enjoy Ð including food.Official product shots for the first premixedSoylent, called Drink, feature people jogging,hiking, and listening to music. In one, a womansqueezes paint onto a palette on her desk, nearsmall canvases dotted with abstract forms likeheavenly bodies in a void. Among her paints andbrushes is a bottle of Soylent. During the 2017Major League Hackathon tour, Soylentencouraged coders to decorate their Soylentbottles and post their art with the hashtag#soylentcanvas.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊClichŽ or not, SoylentÕs invocation of art andcreativity manages to repackage the pairing oftotal abstraction and high taste for the newmillennium. (The questions, corpse-like, return:Is abstraction tasteful? Does it have a flavor?Does it take us out of our bodies or deeper insidethem?) The Coffiest Cafe, an immersive brandexperience promoting a new caffeinated variantof Soylent, occupied a Los Angeles Arts Districtstorefront for a few days in 2016. Styled like asmokeless tech incubator, the Coffiest Cafenevertheless aspired to the clubhouses wherethe last centuryÕs creatives gathered for facetime Ð Parisian cafŽs and SoHo lofts. Anchoringthe decor was RockGrowth 350 by Arik Levy, a big

04/12Still from NetflixÕsÊChefÕs TableÊ(Season 2, Episode 1), withÊAmericanÊchefÊand restaurateurÊGrant Achatz.03.12.18 / 18:16:37 EDT

05/12chrome piece of neo-modernist plop art, likeseveral silver Judds tossed into a starburst.4 Toone side, a bank of commercial refrigerators rosebehind a bar resembling the black-over-whiteCoffiest bottle extruded into a sculpture by AnneTruitt. To the other stood a few chairs and roundtables, the cafŽ furniture of a bygone era. Anunfinished brick wall was dutifully decoratedwith Ð not coffee shop art, exactly, but Coffiestart: the two-tone bottle pictured among roastedbeans and designer mugs.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBeyond invoking the aura of abstract art,the company has also employed actual artists.The design/marketing firm OkFocus, cofoundedby artist Ryder Ripps, developed the originalvisual identity for Soylent.5 In addition to AbigailFuller, panelists at Coffiest Cafe included KibumKim, a dealer/gallerist and an instructor atSothebyÕs Institute; Samantha Culp and AndreaHill of Paloma Powers, an art- and artist-drivenmarketing agency; and Sean Raspet, acontemporary artist specializing in scent- andflavor-based artworks. At the time of the CoffiestCafe in September 2016, Raspet was in factemployed by SoylentÕs parent brand Rosa Foodsas a flavorist.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLike Achatz, Raspet appeals to smell andtaste Ð the so-called chemical senses Ð as muchas to sight. For the work (-) (2012Ð15), Raspetreverse engineered the formula for Coca-Cola,then reconstituted it with enantiomeric versionsof the molecules Ð a kind of chemicalbootlegging, in which asymmetrical moleculesare mirrored, like backwards Nike swooshes.Another piece, Phantom Ringtone (2013), is aÒFragrance formulation and propylene glycol inHDPE container on steel wall mount; 4.5 LitrebottleÓ that tastes like the sensation of thinkingyour phone is buzzing when it isnÕt. Other worksfrom the same period, like Ester Vector (2014),consist of molecules selected for their structure,not their scent Ð recalling systems-basedconceptualism as much as all-over abstraction.Raspet notes that the language for tastes andscents is far less developed than that for sight orsound.6 This indicates the way perfumes andflavorings tend to mimic nature, or are deriveddirectly from plants and animals. This alsoindicates the wide-open territory of chemicalbased abstract art.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊRaspetÕs experiments led him to Soylent. In2015 he became an employee of Rosa Foods,working both from their offices and from his ownstudio. His booth at Frieze New York in 2016created a stir: instead of art, glass-dooredfridges full of Soylent 2.0 lined the walls. Inpromo shots, models in futuristic gray Soylentjumpsuits posed with bottles and boxes.7 ÒMymotivations for working with them had to do withhaving the formulations that I was makingcirculate in a larger quantity and in a largercross-section of society,Ó says Raspet. ÒAlso, [Iwas interested in] making an artwork that is acommercial product and is involved with theprocesses of production, rather than making artthat was simply Ôcommenting onÕ these kinds ofthings without participating in them.Ó8 ForSoylent it was a PR coup, and an introduction toa new subset of time-starved Òcreatives.Ó ForRaspet it was a declaration that he was willing towork within the corporate sector, with tech startups, and even for them Ð to envelop his brand inFilm still from the openning sequence of American PsychoÊ(2000), directed byÊMary Harron.Ê03.12.18 / 18:16:37 EDT