In 2019, I curated and designed Off the Grid, an exhibition on post-war Belgian graphic design at Design Museum Gent. The show included public events (Design Museum Gent, 2019–20) and led to a publication (De Bondt, 2022), all of which have been elements of my practice-based doctoral research at KASK School of Arts and Ghent University.

The COVID pandemic has prompted many people to reconsider their previous living and working rhythms and to consider alternatives. We believe that the global enslavement to the standardised time of clocks and calendars has had a negative impact on us individually, socially, and environmentally. We aim, therefore, to change perceptions of time by helping people step outside societal time, treating time instead as a malleable material that can be stretched and moulded.

The intention of this research is to investigate how interaction designers may explore felt time through the culinary practice of sourdough baking. In this exposition we share how the physical experience and manipulation/shaping of time in sourdough baking provides an experience of fulfillment and satisfaction. We show our insights on how interaction designers, and possibly many other communities of practice and discourse, may learn from this.