Hasta La Ideas

Vienna Design Week 2010: here’s another machine by Mischer’Traxler (see their Nespresso Battery in our earlier story), this time a device for automatically decorating cakes.

Visitors press a button to start the contraption, which pipes icing in a hypotrochoid pattern, like a Spirograph toy, until the visitor releases the button.

Silver balls are then added until the user presses stop.

In this way the user decides when enough decoration has been applied, since the machine cannot be restarted until a new cake is inserted.

Called Till You Stop, the project was presented as part of an exhibition entitled Design Criminals at the MAK museum of applied and contemporary arts, which revisits Adolf Loos’ 1908 essay Ornament and Crime.

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The following details are from the designers:

‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration

mischer’traxler

for the exhibition ‘Design Criminals or A new joy into the world’ – a cooperation of MAK and departure, curated by Sam Jacob.

confectioner – ‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration

How much is too much?

‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration is an idea for a cake decoration method that allows the costumer/visitor to decide how much decoration is applied onto the cake. A simple machine decorates the cake with lines and continuously decorates until the costumer/visitor decides to stop the decoration process. Then in a second process sugar pearls/decoration are dropped onto the glazing. The decor is continuously changing and the costumer/visitor decides whether he prefers a simple ornament or a more complex one. When is the right time to stop? Once the decoration machine is stopped it can not be started again.

The project reflects, on the one hand, the industry behind decoration (industrialised image vs. the romantic imagination) and on the other hand it should trigger people to think about the amount of decoration they actually like.

Process:

an automated cake decoration process (sugar glazing and sugar decoration) can be started and stopped by the buyer / visitor.

Step one: the cake rotates and the sugar glazing gets applied in lines. The pattern is similar to the ones of ‘Spirographs’ which can be applied over a longer period of time.

Step two:  the cake with glazing turns and single sugar pearls fall on the cake.

On Tuesday the 5th of October, 15 visitors at the ‘MAK Design NITE – eyes wide shut’ will have the possibility to decorate a cake with the decoration machine. The event is part of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010

See also:

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An enormous cake made of bricks	A font made of sugar	The Idea of a Tree by Mischer’Traxler