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Mondo Pasta / 94

Milled, mixed with grasshopper-flour, tattooed with squid-ink, pasta becomes a territory of experimentation and reflection for designers and makers.

Armed with irony, skill and taste, the Subalterno 1 team, curator Stefano Maffei and seven Italian designers attempt to turn pasta into a new experience of process, product and meaning. With a highly experimental approach, the designers of "Mondo Pasta" confront tradition and techniques of digital fabrication, self-production and the future of food.

In particular, by hacking, for example Massimiliano Adami has modified the classic Imperia pasta machine (thanks to Fablab Milano and Slow/d) to create spaghetti of varying thickness in such a way as to obtain different degrees of softness. Francesco Bombardi + Marcello Ligabue have introduced new images linked to digital fabrication into machines for the preparation and transformation of pasta resulting in a potential for personalisation and self-production: the pasta is cut with a blade that has a smartphone interface, creating a milling device for pasta making it possible to cut it in any shape. With the aim of generating new values, Lanzavecchia and Wai directly modify production phases with hacked 3Drag printers.

Tecnificio (Patrizia Bolzano and Marcello Pirovano) have come up with a tattoo in squid ink for lasagne that combines food, graphic design and 3D printing. Even more experimental is Bipasta by Brian Sironi and Giulia Tacchini that provides added protein by mixing ordinary flour with grasshopper flour. Claudio Larcher has constructed a reflection on instruments for making pasta, creating three new robots that behind the 1950s styling, in reality conceal the more classic utensils: rolling-pin, pasta-cutter and broiler. Alessandro Stabile has created a kit of 6 3D printing wheels for making new decorations and with great attention to detail has decided to enhance the edge of the pasta.