As a pet lover, I always curious about animals. Because of my dad with an interest of gardening, he own some golden fishes and turtle living in the garden of our house. For some reason I don’t have experience of living with pet such as cat, dog or rabbit. However I always have chances to get in touch with them because most of my friends or relatives around me have pet such as cat and dog. When I was interacting with them, I was always wondering how many thoughts are there within their bright beautiful eyes and their little brain. And how they think about who we are to them?
As a starting point of this project, I bring some research about service animals and how pets have positively impact for human mental health to my first tutorial. Obviously many pets are good companions for us for sure, but this also question me many times that are we a good companion for them? Why are we always sure about their thoughts and their emotions? For exploring this topic, I have different uncertainties about animal as well as their connection with human. From the animal consciousness, do they think they have the same hierarchy with human being? Is it important for them to understand the human world? What is going on with their behavior and their “barking sound”?
Before the first tutorial, I went to the Welcome Collection museum and found a work by artist Emilie Gossiaux. She creates some works about the relationship between her and her guide dog, becoming a hybrid-being to represent their interdependence. The first image showing the two hybrid-beings holding hand and looking at each other, it is looks like they have equal sight and share feelings with each other. And they all have dog and human features on their body, it is hard to say who is the “human dog” and who is the “dog human”. Emilie creates these work to show her interdependence relationship with her guide dog, which show how strong feeling she feel when she considers her guide dog as her soul mate. However, how the guide dog feels about this relationship?