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This Video of an Automated Factory Producing Lasagna at an Industrial Scale is Mesmerizing

…and also makes me kind of sad

By Rain Noe - February 22, 2018

in Tech

Years ago I was walking through my neighborhood (New York's Little Italy) and stopped to wait for the light to change on the corner of Grand and Mulberry. Suddenly I heard a voice coming from above: "Hey mister! Mister! Hey mister!"

I looked up to see a middle-aged Italian woman in a house dress, rollers in her hair, unabashedly leaning out of the window. It was straight out of an old commercial, and I felt certain she was going to ask me if I knew what made her Alfredo sauce so creamy.

Instead she said "Can you throw these in the box?" and dropped a rubber-banded bundle of letters two stories down to me. I caught it, looked around and deposited it in the mailbox on the corner. "Thank youuuuu!" she called, and shut the window. I found it kind of disappointing.

Why am I telling you this? To explain that I have been conditioned, by watching the commercials of my youth, to believe that Italian food products are handmade by warm-hearted people with ebullient personalities. It's a total stereotype of course, I have no idea if that woman even knew how to cook.

Anyways I thought of this as I came across this video. It's footage of pasta company Roma Prince's automated factory in Costa Rica producing lasagna at an industrial scale:

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As mesmerizing and artfully-shot as the footage is, I found it depressing that human beings don't even show up until the end. I also found it sad to watch because I'm trying to quit processed carbohydrates, which I love. But that's another story.

This hulking monstrosity has rollers but doesn't know, nor care, what a house dress is.

It's like a car wash of delicious carbohydrates.

I found myself glumly wondering what this woman's dreams in life are.

o

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Luke Fabis

6 years ago

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I don't understand this human-made fetish people have.

Industrial design is meant to feed into mass production. Designers are not artisans. The whole field is meant to bridge the gap between marketing and engineering. The bulk of anything any designer will ever design is going to be bashed together on an assembly line, sold at large and faceless retailers, and eventually thrown away when the new hotness comes along to replace it.

People are just a means of production. They're not inherently special. May as well embrace it and ignore the marketing gimmicks used to sell it. You'll be happier if you do. That includes pasta.

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Mark Thomas

6 years ago

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"Artfully shot", I guess, but would be 10 times better if properly edited. They have footage for a 90 second video stretched to 9 minutes...

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- Luke Fabis
  
  Mark Thomas
  
  6 years ago
  
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  It's scenery porn. You're supposed to chew on it.
  
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