Fear of the Familiar By Evan Hynes (06/08/10 01:15:40)
I found this article fascinating. It touched on the difference between domesticated animals and wild animals in collaboration with an artist. The artist wrote about how collaboration with a domesticated animal is looked down upon in art as not serious because it seems to be more like play than anything else. We train domesticated animals to love to be played with and interacted with, so they respond positively in the way we raised them to, whereas wild, undomesticated animals react to human interaction based on their instinct and what they learned in the wild. Chances are, wild animals do not understand that we mean to play with them, or even understand what playing with another species (and a human at that) is. Therefore, this artists chooses to work with non-domesticated animals because their action and reaction to his actions have not been tainted by previous conditioning. if I had to choose between working with a pet and a wild animal I would definitely choose to work with a wild animal for the same reason as the artist. [Write Comment]