Augmented Reality Chocolates

The Boutique Sensorium was an immersive art experience created for Milan Design Week by PepsiCo Creator. Guests were invited to participate in ‘the future of dining’ and spent the evening sampling futuristic, edible art.

Lumenal Code was invited to participate, and asked to step outside our comfort zone by our friends at Kulturehaus and A Razor Shiny Knife. Not only was this our first time working with food as an artistic medium, we also decided to try a technique that we had never seen, and were not even sure would work.

Working with PepsiCo’s executive chef, Stephen Kalil, we designed four unique deserts – each one containing a chocolate that had a design ‘printed’ on it in white cocoa butter. Each of the four designs had a unique feel to it, and Chef Kalil used them to inspire the flavor profiles of the dishes.

With flavors like black garlic and goat cheese, Pepsi pot de crème and pear, pecan and blue cheese, each desert was a work of art in itself. However, to create the futuristic dining experience, we used the designs printed on the chocolates to trigger augmented reality animations that linked the dishes to a digital experience. Upon scanning the chocolates with the Layar augmented reality app, a brief animation would introduce the dish. Participants could tap on the chocolate to learn more about it – including the ingredients and inspirations for the dish. Then they were prompted to describe with one or two words what the flavor inspired in them. These responses were collected and visualized on a nearby monitor for other participants.