Edible VR

Today I tried Mattia Casalegno’s Aerobanquets experience. Essentially, you enter VR and experience fantastical worlds, while being treated to an actual gourmet meal.

The experience was far more powerful than I had expected it to be. Somebody pointed out a key point about Aerobanquets: While in another world, you are letting something from the physical world enter through your mouth.

Intellectually, you wouldn’t think that this would make so much of a difference. But in practice, the effect is profound.

Eating is a extremely physical and sensual act. We do it so often that we can tend to forget this.

But when you are in an experience where you are otherwise disconnected from your physical body, it becomes easier to appreciate how primal it is to ingest food. That is particularly true of carefully curated and brilliantly prepared gourmet food, which this was.

I also had a good conversation with Mattia about the possibilities. There are obvious next steps to take which relate directly to the work in our own Future Reality Lab.

For one thing, the experience I had today did not afford a truly shared experience for multiple people of eating in VR. All participants remained in their individual isolated virtual world.

Clearly a next step would be to create a good shared VR dining experience for two or more people. It looks as though there might be an exciting opportunity for collaboration!