Kuhmulation
Three students from different departments came together and formed a team. In the beginning there was nothing, but a cow. A cow was the start and focal point in the project module “Trash, Kitsch, Camp or Pop”.
Why a cow? As we were a team of three, we had different ideas about which direction to move in. However, one team member had a clear idea about what he would like to do during this course. The idea was to make Glitch Art (with digital or analog errors, eg: a picture with missing pixels), and the first trial was on an image of a cow. At the beginning, the cow attracted the team’s interest as a symbolic animal in Switzerland in cultural and touristic contexts. Furthermore, when we dug deeper into the topic, we found that the cow symbol is often met in agriculture, mass production, religion, animal rights and ethics, etc. These findings were very interesting and valuable and opened many possibilities for our work; that is why we could not decide on the message we want to bring across and decided to leave it open, as the were to many interesting direction to move in. The results of our research were taken as inspiration for individual work.
The task we set ourselves was to show a cow in different aspects and contexts, each in our individual style. At first we all tried out different things, making little cow figures out of old toilet-paper rolls or milk cartons.
We then tried working with a set of rules – each person was to create something, which had some relation to a cow and its environment, and then give the object/drawing/animation to the next person to do with what they pleased. It was to become a chain of production. Ultimately, we felt too constrained by these rules and pursued our own interests in the topic. One team member went on with animation and the glitch effect, another member decided to work with graphics (patterns), and the third one make 3D objects out of trash (newspaper, nylon stockings, plastic bags, textiles, objects form the secondhand shop, etc.). Everything came together as an installation in a room; we arranged it like a living room with a TV, cowhide carpets, a dining table with food, pictures, wallpaper and a small altar dedicated to the cow.
Despite being given absolute freedom, we did not find it easy to go beyond our personal tastes and standards for aesthetic at the very beginning. The works looked good, but restricted, which did not fulfil the potential of the project; the ultimate freedom and going beyond the borders of conventional taste were two main aspects.
In the final phase of the project we had the animated video with glitch effects, different patterned wallpapers, paintings/pictures and 3D objects. There were a lot of works that were connected to each other by a cow personage, but there was no unanimous picture – they still did not communicate a particular message. Only when we began to arrange objects for the final exhibition did we finally begin to bring everything together in what we called the “living room of a crazy cow freak”. We built it around the idea of a cow being as beloved a pet as a cat, and tried to bring in the topics, which we had started our project with (animal treatment, religion, etc.). One question we asked ourselves was; “Why is a cow, which provides us with food and income, not treated similarly to a (comparatively useless) cat? “ – we are still looking for answers.
A video posted by Design Management Intl. (@designmanagementintl) on Jul 15, 2015 at 12:58am PDT
- Project by Alexandra Kolosova (DMI), Fabian Siegenthaler (3D Animation) and Helen Leuzinger (Graphic Design)