Field Guide to an Art World part A

Overview:

After exploring the examples of previous field guides and doing some idea searching of my own, the art world practice that I will be doing my field guide on is latte art.

Outside of that short lived moment of joy I experience when I see a little design in the foam of my coffee, I hadn’t really given it much thought. But after spending some time poking around on the internet I found quite a bit of information about it. Information such as the history, contests, how to guides, unique art work.

I already knew that some people go through extensive training on how to make all the different types of coffee but I never really understood how much time, energy and effort is put into creating art in the foam of a cup of coffee. While doing a little research on this art world I found different how-to-guides and each commented on how it’s actually a bit difficult to do because you need to have access to particular equipment to actually do it. That unless you have some super fancy coffee maker at home, chances are you won’t just be able to one day try your hand at latte art with your basic household coffee maker and milk.

There is such a vast array of designs that have been done in latte foam and the attention to detail and the creativity is just astounding. The images that I have come across are really intricate. And the fact that a beautiful picture can be created within the space of a cup is really something. The pictures range from detailed leafs, faces, recreations of paintings and even characters from TV and film. One thing that I learned was that some individuals can create 3D art in latte foam. And it appears that those who decide to do 3D art tend to get a bit more whimsical and adventurous in their design. For example, one gif I saw was someone had made about a dozen tiny heads of cats all in one cup, so you could barely see where one ended and the other began, but then they would shake the cup lightly and it looked like all the cats were jumping up and down in nearly uncontrollable excitement.

I think that there is interesting information about latte art, my only issue is I’m not sure how I want to frame this whole project. Latte art has only been around since the 1980’s, or at least in focus and considered to be a thing, so it’s still relatively new and yet at the same time fairly established. I’m think of maybe seeing/getting photos of latte art from around campus or Eugene. Either way I think it’ll be interesting to know more about and to get to experience more latte art first hand.

Explanation of my interest:

As a coffee enthusiast, I have always enjoyed seeing some design in my coffee but it’s also really impressive because while I love having a cup of coffee I haven’t ever really given it much thought outside of if I like the flavor or not. What drew me to this art world is firstly due to my love of caffeine but secondly, I really like when art appears on something that usually isn’t assumed to be an art world. While I do think that cooking, and to an extent making coffee, is a form of creative expression I hadn’t given much thought to coffee outside of my immediate needs.

Once I decided that latte art was the art world that I wanted my field guide to be about I took some time to think about what was it that really made me want to learn more about it. Outside of giving myself another reason to go buy a cup of coffee. The conclusion that came to me was that it makes me feel good and a little special. In that moment when the barista sets the cup in front of me and I get to see a glimpse of what their artistic skills or idea of art is, I feel like I get to share that moment with them. It’s not just them preparing a drink for me because at the end they took the time and attempted to make art in foam. I know that once I actually drink the coffee that the design will be forever destroyed but I still got to have a moment where someone created art and then just handed it to me without a second thought.

Short list of media/transmedia to illustrate my field guide:

Here are a few links to pages that I think I’ll use to some degree for this assignment-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latte_art

http://sprudge.com/there-was-a-penis-latte-art-contest-in-paris-75927.html

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/creative-latte-coffee-art/

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Latte-Art

http://www.latteartguide.com/2013/04/what-is-latte-art.html

I’m definitely going to include photos, I just have to go through and find which ones work/fit best and what I think would be interesting to see.

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