Created by: Sam De Armas and Dror Margalit
Humans, like any other animals, have to eat to survive. And with millions of species fighting for survival, it is no surprise that our animalistic nature drove us to the top of the food chain. But as the species that dominate major parts of the food chain, we must ask ourselves: have we gone too far?
With our project, we want to explore different aspects of meat consumption in today’s society. From animal cruelty to the environmental toll that it takes on the planet, there is no doubt that we can improve life on earth if we eat less meat. Thus, we want to create an experience where people can empathize with animals who were born into the meat industry’s reality, as well as make connections between meat consumption to environmental damage.
Although a large component of meat consumption contains violent, triggering images, we will avoid showing this side of it. We will also avoid telling people that meat consumption is wrong or making them feel bad about it. That is because we believe that meat consumption, in many cases, is tied to culture or can have health benefits in places where alternatives are not available. Instead, we chose to focus on approaches that evoke empathy and hopefulness, offering people a new perspective on this subject.
As of now, we have two main options for our experience. First, we are considering presenting the life of a pig through the lens of what a human might think of as an unhappy life. For example:
Wake up in a small studio apartment
Brush teeth in a dim lit bathroom
Almost empty toothpaste
Sit at a bus stop / riding the bus (very crowded)
Enter the office
Sitting doing paperwork
Pen runs out of ink / computer frozen
Lunch break / water cooler
Finish work
Printer runs out of paper / angry boss
Go home (bus ride?/rain)
Eat microwave dinner
Looks completely different from the picture
Go to sleep
Loud noises coming from outside
The second approach we are considering takes an environmental impact lens. For that, we are thinking of creating a VR/ game experience where participants experience the life of an animal (e.gpig) in their environment. As they interact with the game, the environment around them is ruined.
Game version:
First scene is an intro/welcome page
Click with a mouse?
The view is a farm on the bottom and the top is a city view or forest
Player clicks on animal
Causes buildings to be covered in plants / forest starts to die
Game over is when all animals have been clicked
It’ll full screen to the destroyed scene
VR version
Still a dining table for the installation / vr headset in place or on top of a plate
When you place the headset the viewer is sitting in a table in the middle of a bunch of pigs (in mud)
Then the city view appears
Make it so it’s obvious that you need to click on the pigs to progress
Hopefully the outcome is they either stop because they feel bad for the pigs
Or they finish but realize the damage they have done
Inspiration:
Commenti