Evaluating food experiments

For this project I was inspired by the Labs at Whitechapel. I took lots of photos of the test tubes, and containers holding different liquids in the labs. I managed to get hold of some test tubes to use in my project as I wanted to treat the project like a science experiment rather than  design brief. I thought this would give my project an original feel and my research would be much more interesting. This is one of the reasons I used food as a material. 

With my test tubes I have started exploring the possibilities of different substances being contained/ let loose or contaminated. Inside some of the tubes I have placed things such as my grapes, saltanas and sugar from my previous experiments. Then I stared covering them with things like porridge, caramelised sugar, and latex to make it look as though they were contaminated. I think that my test tubes look very exciting when presented in a line next to each other. The colours blend in together and there is a sense of bacteria and growth. 

 I am now looking at how I can relate this experimentation back to my original experiments and I thought of the idea of freezing transformations. For example putting a mouldy grape in to caramelised sugar or latex which would freeze bacteria growth so the mouldy grape would remain at a certain point in its transformations. I think it links nicely to my research of timed experiments in my sketch book. I also thought about creating layers of different foods such as sugar, gelatine, porridge and then coating the whole thing in latex so that it remains contained. 

I am finding it hard to work with some of the materials for example quite often when I melt the sugar its so hot that it melts the other materials such as latex or gelatine. So i am in the process of  making more samples. I have put some grapes on cocktail sticks and also some pieces of gelatine and dipped them separately into different substances such as porridge, sugar and latex to see what works and what doesn't.

I am also worried that I will run out of time to finish the project and will end up with lots of samples and not really a clear idea of a final jewellery product. On the other hand I think I have explored the materials thoroughly. I think the lesson for the future will be don't be too ambitious with what I want to achieve in such a short space of just two weeks.