Diego Guerra
2026
The artifact was a structure in steel and chromed steel — a single tap connected to a hidden cooling system — presented as part of the HGK Basel graduation show at the Transbona Halle in Basel. No label, no name, no explanation. One drink, one tap, one interaction.
The object was designed to strip the bar encounter down to its essential gesture: approaching, pouring, tasting. Every element that typically precedes the sensory experience — the menu, the brand, the bartender, the price, the visual identity of the glass — was removed. What remained was the liquid itself, and the person in front of it.
The drink changed periodically, always formulated to challenge the palate — layered, complex, resistant to easy categorisation. The absence of reference was intentional: without a name or a description to anchor expectation, the taster was left with only what the flavour actually did to them.
The installation didn't instruct or explain. It simply created the conditions for a different kind of attention — one where the sensory experience couldn't be outsourced to an image or a price point. The research had argued that expectation corrupts flavour. The object tried to remove expectation entirely, and see what was left.
The research part of the project traces how the cocktail — centred on flavour — became increasingly defined by image, status and visual expectation. Drawing from the anthropology of alcohol, the neuroscience of flavour perception, and critical theory around the object and the primacy of the image, it maps a specific cultural shift: the moment the drink stopped being tasted first and started being seen first. The research grounds the design intervention — it builds the argument that expectation, shaped by capitalism and the digital image, arrives before the liquid does, and distorts the sensory experience that was always supposed to be the point.
I have been working behind a bar for a long time. Long enough to know that what happens there has very little to do with the drink, and everything to do with what surrounds it — the noise, the light, the price, the image on the menu, the expectation that walks through the door before the person does. That gap between what a drink is and what it is supposed to mean was what I brought to my master thesis.
Expectations 86'd 2023 - Thesis project Experimental Design Master HGK FHNW
(Research+Interactive installation)