Conclusions
Whether any of the performances that have been carried out in relation to this research have actually managed to achieve the synergistic relationship between food and music I was looking for is a question I dare not answer. What I can say is that I have certainly gained a better understanding of the elements that might help establish such synergy. The most important conclusion I have come to is that, in order to create a truly coherent performance including a food and music pairing, it is essential that one focuses not only on the pairing itself (whether using crossmodal correspondences, semantic matching, or a different tool), but on the performance as a whole. Analysing it in terms of its different components (audience, space, performers, food, music…), and the mediating elements between them is an approach I have found extremely helpful, and one I will continue exploring and refining in the future. Whether the relationship between the components of a performance is synergistic, additive, or antagonistic depends in great measure on the elements that mediate it, and on the relationships that are, in turn, established between those mediating elements themselves. A great crossmodal match might be made virtually inoperative if woven into the wrong narrative, a basic structural design might acquire great meaning and power if imbued with the dramatic expression of ritual. The list of mediating elements I have given in this research is of course not fixed, nor does it intend to be comprehensive, and it might be reduced, expanded, and redefined as the needs of the artist require it.
In order to bring both food and music to a more or less similar level of importance within the performance, one might design a setting incorporating characteristic features of the respective original settings of these two domains. These features can then be rearranged in a way that might remind the guest of both, making a new, unfamiliar setting feel comfortable by drawing on the familiarity its constituting parts instil. Such a hybrid setting was used during Four Bites of Autumn. The small dining room of a café was rearranged, and chairs and tables were ordered so that the guests would be facing the musicians, who played in one of the corners of the room. This setting provided the general context of an eating occasion, but clearly focused the attention of the guests on the musicians. As a consequence, audience members felt free to share comments with each other while the musicians were not playing, but while there was music, silence was generally maintained, creating a kind of focus that is usual when listening to music in a concert, but rather unusual in our eating culture. This type of focus while eating was appreciated by several audience members during the experiments, who mentioned chewing slower than they normally would have, and experiencing more intense flavours than they were used to. The setting used during Experiment 2, in which the audience sat in a circle around the performers, who played back to back, created a similar hybrid feeling between eating occasion (sitting around a large table for a meal) and concert, and proved to be a very effective way of creating this sensation when the performance space is not originally intended for eating. Both of these formats proved to be successful settings, which invited to rethink and renew the rituals of the concert hall, creating a new type of performance with a greater sense of connection between the members of the audience, and between the audience and the performers.
The fact of designing and composing both the food and the music for the experiments myself was interesting because of the extremely high degree of control it gave me over the final product, and because of the parallels between the two domains that I could establish during the creative process. However, working together with the café Bij de Roos for Four Bites of Autumn made the advantages of such a collaboration clear: it freed me from most of the logistics that the presence of food in the performance implied, it provided the perfect location, and it allowed for an artistic product that was richer because of the fact that more than one mind had worked on it.
Spence et al. point to the danger that “in the pursuit of the performance, the scientific insights and underpinnings may be lost in the creative process” (2021, p. 16). My recommendation to future artists in this field is that they very carefully study the research that has been done in the field of crossmodal correspondences and sonic seasoning and that, if they have the chance, work together with a crossmodal scientist during the design of their performances. However, I would also argue that, while research in this field is very relevant and should definitely inform their creative output, this information should be used to create the sort of constraint that spurs creativity, and not the sort that paralyses it. My experience of creating Experiment 1 almost exclusively basing the food and music pairing on studies about crossmodal correspondences was a rather frustrating one, and its result was, in my view, somewhat stale. Other mediating elements, such as narrative and ritual, should not be dismissed. A performance informed by the existing scientific knowledge about crossmodal correspondences, but nurtured by other elements that might make the artist feel like they are giving the best of themselves, will undoubtedly result in a richer and more enjoyable experience for both artist and audience, while respecting the work of the scientists in this field.
Reflecting on the use of preexisting music as part of a crossmodal matching, I would argue that it is definitely possible, though perhaps the mediating elements that should be taken into account should be slightly different than those one would use if using music specifically composed for the occasion. One can easily write music that features certain musical parameters determined by crossmodal correspondences with the basic tastes of the food, or by words describing texture if a semantic matching is designed, but already composed music will rarely fit in these parameters as neatly. Instead, one might have to design the narrative around the pairing more carefully, or to think in terms of affect when designing the semantic matching. It is also possible to combine both preexisting music and music composed specifically for the occasion. For instance, the latter might be used to introduce those musical characteristics one would like to emphasise in the already existing piece.
Future research might focus on further exploring the different mediating elements that have been described in this thesis, on studying the relationships that might be established between them, and on describing other potential mediating elements that have not been mentioned here. It would also be interesting to focus on exploring the temporal evolution of flavour and music, especially for artistic research in this field, since this undertaking would imply a creative investment unlikely to occur in research that is preoccupied with optimising the match between music and flavour/taste (Spence et al., 2021, p. 15). Another potential avenue for future research would be that of using semantic matching to make challenging works of art more understandable to the audience by providing an element which, through a different sensory modality, emphasises a particular aspect of these works.
Lastly, I would like to share a more personal conclusion, related not so much to the research itself, but to the research question and its function. The purpose of the research question is to illuminate the path that is the enquiry and I found that, in order to do that effectively, it sometimes needs to change. The approach of letting this research grow like the herbs, shrubs, and trees in a garden also meant that, occasionally, exactly what I was doing became clear only as I was doing it. The research question would help me determine that it was necessary for me to take on a specific task at a given moment. But as I was carrying out that task I would sometimes discover that the question I was trying to answer was no longer the one that had driven me to work on it in the first place. It took me a while to realise that the research question itself was but one more plant in this research-garden, one that needed regular trimming to grow healthily.