The Artistic Ape

07.10.2021

The laboratory feel to these experiments reminded me of Desmond Morris' book 'The Artistic Ape' which has been a constant inspiration to me over the past few years. This time I am specifically looking at the animal art chapter and which Desmond explains the experiments done on chimpanzees, apes, elephants and other animals. One experiment in particularly is the 'Congo Experiments' Where they tested Congo's creative abilities, testing him with pens, pencils and eventually paint. These tests are of interest to my experiments, the boxes on the pages in which Congo is prompted to draw inside of repeat on the pages of Morris' book, this chimpanzee has gone through the same repetitive gruelling task as my animal alter egos are going through.

I want to test my animal alter egos' creativity, give them tasks to complete during their test period, to see what they do.

Play The Animals

I've struggled to get into the mind set of these animals. I found that when I first started playing my human alter egos in the Sculpt Factory, it really helped when I dressed in their outfits, wore their hats, their gloves, brushed my hair back, put on their accent... I want to 'become animal' I have started making pieces to fix to my face, to make me feel like an animal, I plan to cast these plasticine pieces in latex and stick them to my face for each individual subject (animal).