Wild Things
<p><em>Wild Things</em> is the first in a series of <em>Blowup</em> readers. It collects several essays on the subject of media art for animals.</p> <p>When curating this inaugural edition of Blowup, I was motivated by a desire to capture a sense of the current and future possibilities to reach non-human audiences. Several recent events inspired me to pursue this, including hearing about a university research project wherein a game between humans and pigs was being developed, and watching a friend’s cat play a game designed especially for cats on their iPad. Perhaps it is inevitable that our contemporary galaxy of gadgets such as smartphones and tablets would collide with an awareness of animals as autonomous actors, as we see in hundreds of YouTube videos depicting animals being cute or funny. Thinking about animals as potential witnesses to or participants in art is a little outside our usual conception of them that places them into categories of friend or food. Redefining potential audiences for art also naturally demands we redefine our notions of what art is, and what it’s for, raising more questions than answers…</p>
Editors: Michelle Kasprzak
Contributors: Michelle Kasprzak, Matthew Fuller, Amy Youngs, Giovanni Aloi, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, Elio Caccavale, Michael Reiss, Louis Bec
Graphic Designer: Arjen de Jong, Buro Duplex
Part of: Blowup Reader