Feed Your Brain · A participatory food artwork
Calm has become the rarest resource of modern life - and the vagus nerve, its most quiet keeper. A nourished brain and a nervous system with strong vagal tone may be our most vital assets. Vagal Foods makes their science tangible at one communal table.
Selected concept
Vagal Foods has been accepted as a concept for Vienna Design Week 2026- Austria's leading design festival. The communal table transforms research on the vagus nerve into a spatial, sensory work that people enter together.
It is not an illustration viewed from a distance. Guests sit within the work, share its food and experience the science through taste, pace, breath and connection.
It answers this year's festival theme — "FOKUS: The Essence of Lightness" - with a scientific wager: lightness is not a mood, but a physiological state. The felt quality of a nervous system at rest.
On display in Vienna on 29 September 2026, from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
The idea
The vagus nerve is a major communication pathway between the brain and the body. Extending from the brainstem toward the heart, lungs and digestive system, it helps regulate processes associated with rest, digestion, recovery and adaptation.
Vagal Foods translates this science into an artistic encounter. Fermentation, warmth, texture, slow eating, breath and social connection become materials in a communal lunch— one idea, felt three times, at a table tracing the nerve's branching form.
The science unfolds around you, and between you.
The table
For Vienna Design Week, the surface of one long table follows the vagus nerve's branching route—from its brainstem origin toward the organs it helps connect. Scientific anatomy becomes the composition of a shared meal.
There is no audience outside the work. Everyone who takes a seat becomes part of it: eating, passing, speaking and pausing along the same continuous line.
The three stations
STATION I
Fermented
Kimchi, sauerkraut and other fermented dishes are served family-style near the brainstem end of the table. Fermentation opens a conversation about the microbiota, immune system and vagal pathways that connect gut and brain. Featuring kimchi by Blvb-blub KG.
→ Microbiota–gut–brain communication
STATION II
Calming
Good bread and excellent olive oil are eaten slowly at the table's midpoint. Temperature, aroma, texture and pace become sensory cues—an invitation to notice how eating can shift attention from urgency toward rest and digestion. Featuring olive oil by MANI Bläuel.
→ Sensory cues & parasympathetic tone
STATION III
Shared & passed
Where the two branches meet, a single chocolate is passed from hand to hand along the table's final stretch. Washed Mexican cacao — processed to keep the epicatechin and theobromine that studies link to richer cerebral blood flow — poured in small, generous pieces whose mold traces the nerve's branching form. The sequence closes with a reward, and the gesture carries the science: calm, like chocolate, is passed between people. Featuring bean-to-bar chocolate by AHERZ.
→ Connection & co-regulation
Partners
Makers at the table
How it begins
Before food arrives, the table takes one slow breath together. A longer exhale offers a simple way to engage vagal regulation—and turns an individual biological act into a shared beginning.
Who's behind the table
Concept creator
An independent researcher and creative from Romania (Postgraduate studies, University of Bern) who created Vagal Foods to make the science of the vagus nerve tangible. She designs the menu, the rituals and the story behind every station — and hosts the table.
Feed Your Brain ↗andrabria.com ↗
Artist
Rauth studied ceramics at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She works primarily with ceramics and porcelain and runs the Atelier VOTE. In addition to ceramic works, she also creates abstract, constructive paintings — for example from the series of works Light is Visible. Her works have been shown at exhibitions and art auctions in Vienna, where she lives and works.
Atelier VOTE ↗
Scientific Advisor
A microbiome and gut–brain researcher who keeps Vagal Foods true to the science it serves. She translates current research on the vagus nerve, fermentation and the gut microbiome into the menu, the labels and the stories told at each station.
Isabella Wagner ↗
Artist
Allan brings the props and creates the multimedia assets. He is a creative technologist specialized in Augmented Reality, Digital Fashion and CGI Video Production, based in Vienna.
Allan Berger ↗Vagal Foods came to life through your belief in sitting at the same table - metaphorically and literally. Thank you for setting it with us.
Follow along
Research from the Science page, retold as illustrated posts — follow @feed.your.brain.xyz on Instagram.
