'The incredible shrinking man' is a research by artist Arne Hendriks with the implications of downsizing the human species to better fit the earth.
If we decide to shrink this will change our relationship with food and the entire industry around it. It will effect how much we eat, how often we eat, what we eat, perhaps even how we eat. And in turn these changes will have an impact on the crops we grow and animals we rear, and how we grow them.
To focus on this exciting field of research we are planning to open a restaurant. The restaurant will cater both for ‘regular’ sized customers as well as for the 50 centimeter sized customer of the future. Calculations predict that this person will only need about 2% of the calories of todays people. That means one regular portion could feed up to 50 people.
The restaurant will also feature a kitchen of the future. It wouldn’t be wise, and also very difficult, to downsize our ingredients as well. One bean will go a long way. The restaurant is a research facility to understand differences in energy needs, cooking processes, our changing relationship with ingredients and cooking utensils as well as a real restaurant.
