Edible Object Identifier 2026

January Lamp - A SAD Lamp Study

Details

2026

Final year project at
Central Saint Martins

Edible Object Identifier

Edible-Object-Identifier is a food scanner that reveals what we don’t understand about modern ultra-processed food. It responds to the way ultra-processed food has disrupted our relationship with eating: food becomes easier to consume, but harder to recognise through its source, process, material quality and bodily effect. The project uses AI as a reflection tool to help us understand our own emotional relationship with what we eat, beyond what the ingredients label can tell us.

By intentionally creating unfamiliarity, the project sees this disruption as an opportunity to explore alternative ways of using AI. Unlike the usual human-AI interaction, it flips the dynamic so that the human is the one being interrogated instead of asking the questions. The machine approaches food through a lens of “naivety”, rather than “intelligence” - as though it had only just encountered modern food and needs to be constantly told what it is and the reasons for its consumption. The interaction hopes to prompt self-discovery, creating dedicated moments for putting your own meal into words and encouraging a more present and conscious way of eating.

Making Proces

Pulling the side slider down raises the shade and reveals more light. Pushing it up lowers the shade, covering the source and softening the atmosphere. The direct relationship between hand movement and light level makes the interaction easy to understand without a dial, screen or menu.

A rack-and-gear mechanism translates the slider’s short movement into the larger vertical movement of the shade. This became the project’s organising idea: brightness is controlled by physically revealing or concealing light rather than electronically altering it.

Early cardboard models tested how overlap, distance and translucent materials affect glare and diffusion. Further prototypes explored gear geometry, slider grip, shade weight and wall thickness, refining the relationship between gesture, mechanical resistance and light. The final prototype combines a vase-printed housing, lightweight two-part shade and removable mechanism cartridge. Separating the printed components, electronics and metal rod supports repair and replacement.

The project connects atmospheric lighting with mechanical clarity and demonstrates how a functional adjustment can become part of a product’s character. It also reveals a productive tension: the intricate mechanism creates a distinctive interaction but pushes against the coarse, efficient and support-free printing process proposed by the brief.

January Lamp - A SAD Lamp Study

2025