The “Logic Bonbon”: A Computable Food, Or an Eatable
Computer?
Jialin Deng

Exertion Games Lab, Department of Human-Centered
Computing, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACTThis proposal presents the "Logic Bonbon," an artwork that embodies an integration of food and computation to celebrate theinterconnectedness of human-food interactions within HCI. Basedon the authors’ previous research exploring “alternative ways” ofcomputation through food design, the Logic Bonbon is a liquidcentered dessert that “computes” its own flavor and presentation
through hydrodynamically induced logic operations (AND, OR, and
XOR), which form the basis of computation. This artwork serves asa material speculation, provoking a reimagining of the concept of"resilience" – the theme of this Art Exhibition – across the boundary
between the “edible” and the “computable.” It envisions an innovative future for Human-Food Interaction (HFI) design by considering
the material paradox between fragility and adaptability, ephemerality and durability, as well as palatability and computability.

CCS CONCEPTS• : Human-Centered Computing; • Interaction Design;

KEYWORDS
Human-Food Interaction, Food design
ACM Reference Format:
Jialin Deng and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 2023. The “Logic Bonbon”: A Computable Food, Or an Eatable Computer?. In Designing Interactive Systems
Conference (DIS Companion ’23), July 10–14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ACM,
New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563703.3596646

1

INTRODUCTION

A prevailing topic in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) involves
the endeavor to “weave together” the digital and physical domains[20, 23, 35] as interaction design has evolved into a matter of “material concern” emphasizing the material attributes of a system[29, 30, 34]. However, the material attributes are often disregardedin the context of human-food interactions [4, 8, 9, 11, 22], wherein
the material affordances of food [16] are mostly underexploited.
Consequently, most existing works have overlooked the potential
to “celebrate the pleasurable and enjoyable experiences that people
have with food” [19] derived from the food material’s properties
that accentuate its aesthetic, emotional, sensual, and sociocultural
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3563703.3596646

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller

Exertion Games Lab, Department of Human-Centered
Computing, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
aspects. Nevertheless, recent research on the integration of food andcomputation [12] proposed that the emergence of “material integration” could be understood as a novel approach for devising future
designs in human-food interactions. Furthermore, the concept of“unconventional computing” and material computation (or embodied computing) [24, 25, 28], which are grounded in the intention
to conceive “other ways to compute” [3], consider “computation”
in a broader sense to step away from the concept of universality.
Therefore, such concept raises a question for food as material realizations of computation: What does it mean if we design a foodthat is computable, or a computer that is eatable?
Within the context, we propose exhibiting our work, the “Logic
Bonbon”, which is based on our research on the design of “foodas computational artifact” [12, 13]. The Logic Bonbon is a liquidcentered dessert that can perform basic forms of computation, thelogic operations (AND, OR, and XOR) induced by inner fluidic
dynamics. This capability enables the dessert to computationallyregulate its flavor and presentation in response to diners’ inputs.
Such integration of food and computation allows food creators
to essentially “program” the food, and the diners to initiate the“execution” of the program based on given parameters (i.e., theinputs diners operate through the choice of flavors and sequences).
The computation results in different flavor combinations that the
diners can then consume.
Through the exhibition, we attempt to represent a situated setting of food pavilion that encourages visitors to experience a novel
computable food – which is also an eatable computer. Visitors will
step into a journey at the intersection of food and computation
through appreciating, creating, and playing with the Logic Bonbon
through tangible pieces of the artwork as well as visual materials.
It is worth noticing that due to food safety and storage issues, if
we may not be able to exhibit real food for displaying and eating,
we will showcase the mockups of the Logic Bonbon for visitors toplay with (see the accompanied specification document for moredetails). Through exhibiting the artwork, we aim to demonstrate
how food as a material can mediate new ways to compute, and at
the same time, how complex computational concepts can be mademore accessible through food as a creative medium.
Furthermore, considering the theme of this Art Exhibition –“resilience”, our artwork aims to provoke a reimagination of theconception of resilience in a broader sense within HCI. Throughshowcasing our artwork as a counterfactual artifact combining foodand computation, we attempt to stimulate insightful discussions
beyond the boundary between the “eatable” and the “computable”
through the material paradox between fragility and adaptability,
ephemerality and durability, as well as palatability and computability. We hope to use our artwork as a material speculation [31] toenvision a new pathway to an innovative HFI futures.

DIS Companion ’23, July 10–14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Jialin Deng and Florian Mueller

Figure 1: Right: Logic Bonbons in making; Left: a basic unit of the Logic Bonbon system.

Figure 2: Schematic structure of a Logic Bonbon system, and the logic operation within a Logic Bonbon (AND gate).

2

INSPIRATION FROM RELATED WORKS

Prior works inspired us to explore the possibilities for encoding
computational capabilities (including actuation and sensing) into
food materials so that the food physically transforms in response toexternal stimuli [21, 32]. However, these works realized only “fixed”
processes (i.e., a one-off change of state according to predefined
behaviors), hence they are not modifiable once produced. Interestingly, prior research on “material integration” [10] envisaged afuture of “cyber food” experiences by conceptualizing the notion of“food as computational artifact”. Building on this, we aims to realize
this concept by exploiting the food’s abilities for direct realizationof a computational process to facilitate dynamic “inter-actions” [34]between consumers and food.
Furthermore, prior research has exploited fluids to perform computation [1, 2, 7, 15, 18, 36], including the a hydromechanical analog
computer, “Moniac” [6]; as well as fluidic devices functioning as
responsive display [26], performing logic operations [5, 14, 17, 27],
and accomplishing soft autonomous robots control [18, 33]. Overall,these prior works demonstrate that fluid’s unique physical properties and mechanisms make it versatile materials for use in performing computation. More importantly, we note that fluids, suchas soup, broth, coulis, liquor, and syrup, are all essential elementsthat enrich our flavor experiences. This inspired us to design andexperiment with fluidic systems out of food material.

3

CREATION & FABRICATION OF THE LOGIC
BONBON

We conceived the idea of the “Logic Bonbon” (Figure 1) after noting that some desserts contain a multi-flavored center and thattraditional bonbons often contain a liquor or coulis center that canenrich the flavor experience. The Logic Bonbon is designed witha multi-layered structure that determines specific fluidic configurations and logic functions (Figure 2). Furthermore, we sought tocreate the Logic Bonbon dessert to be able to computationally configure its properties (flavor and visual presentation) in response toexternal diner inputs via integrated fluidic mechanisms. Therefore,
a complete Logic Bonbon system consists of a set of input modules,
a logic gate, and an output module (Figure 2). Figure 4 shows thecooking process of the Logic Bonbon [12].

4INTERACTING WITH THE LOGIC BONBON

The Logic Bonbon interaction begins with the diners applying
force to the flavor reservoirs. The flavor reservoirs are two pipettes
filled with two different flavor inputs: “x” and “y”. When a dinerpresses the reservoirs, the flavored liquids (inputs) will flow throughthe mount into a Logic Bonbon and produce different outcomesaccording to its logic function (Figure 2). Figure 3 demonstrates asummary of three logic operations and the possible flavor outcomes.
The outcome might vary based on the timing and sequence of theThe “Logic Bonbon”: A Computable Food, Or an Eatable Computer?

Figure 3: A summary of three logic functions the Logic Bonbon can perform and the associated flavor outcomes.

DIS Companion ’23, July 10–14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Jialin’s past practice lies at the intersection of media arts, visualcommunication, and UX design. Her works have received the firstrunner-up prize for the Mullen Lowe NOVA Awards (2015) andexhibited at the London Design Festival (LDF) 2015, and Open Day
2022 at Monash University. She has also been invited as a guest
speaker at Living in a Material World, LDF 2015; Young People Matter, Shanghai, 2017; and TEDxGuangzhou, 2019; Dagstuhl Seminar(Eat-IT), 2022, and CHI-Melbourne, 2022. Jialin’s personal website
is: www.jialindeng.xyz.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller is Professor of Future Interfaces at
Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), where he leads theaward-winning Exertion Games Lab. Previously, he was at RMIT,
Stanford, University of Melbourne, Microsoft Research, MIT MediaLab, Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Labs, Xerox Parc, and industrial researchorganization CSIRO. He featured on the top 100 human-computerinteraction (HCI) researcher list and was the first Australian-based
researcher to be selected to chair the CHI conference: HCI’s highestranked publication outlet. Floyd’s games have featured on the BBC,
ABC, Discovery Science Channel, and in Wired magazine, and they
have been played by more than 20,000 players, across three continents. Floyd is an inaugural honoree of the Australian Design
Centre’s Australian Design Honors and a member of the prestigious ACM SIGCHI Academy, an honorary group of leaders “whohave made substantial contributions to the field of HCI”.

REFERENCES

Figure 4: Cooking process of the Logic Bonbon.
diner pressing the reservoirs, as well as the pressure they applied.
Figure 5 demonstrates diners interacting with the Logic bonbon.

5

CONCLUSION

Taken together, through exhibiting the artwork, we wish to create amultisensorial and participatory journey for the visitors. We invite
visitors to experience the artwork by tasting the actual dessert (ifpossible), touching the tangible pieces, assembling a Logic Bonbon
system, and initiating an execution of the logic operations. By
letting the visitors to taste, create, build, and play with the artwork,
we wish to gain the first-person insights to answer the question we
asked above, that might contribute to our future research.

6

ARTISTS

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