With(in) : three women, three informal settlements, and the rituals of the meal as a microcosm of urban life

Shared transnational challenges are connecting people in unprecedented ways. Crises such as the 2020 pandemic proved that the world is a single organism and no issue is only a local issue. If social and technological trends continue toward increased globalization, people of different cultures must find new ways to better understand the needs and values of communities that we are unlikely to experience first-hand. To build this understanding, this work conducts a natural experiment to increase cross-cultural awareness through a medium all can relate to: food and its attendant social rituals. The goal is to create a novel way to understand and communicate urban specificities by using the table rituals as a microcosm of community. The research looks for a connection between the act of procuring food, preparing food and eating together and the structures of the communities people live in. This thesis is a two-part inquiry comprising: (1) A comparative study conducted with field research at rapidly urbanizing areas of Port Harcourt, Cairo and Guadalajara, and (2) an immersive video installation and multimedia book for communicating this content.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Advincula, Gabriela Bila Bandeira.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kent Larson.

• Program in Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130995

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130995