DESIGN IN CRISIS
SENSING LIKE AN ANIMAL
Thomas Thwaites - Goatman
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Thomas Thwaites is a British designer and writer. He describes himself as "a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science, futures research & etc." His experimental projects are making him famous all around the globe.
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Building an exoskeleton of a goat and a prosthetic stomach to digest grass before attempting to cross the Alps on all fours must rank as one of the weirder research projects funded by the Wellcome Trust. But London designer Thomas Thwaites has turned his bizarre mission to bridge the boundary between Homo sapiens and other species by becoming “GoatMan” into an enlightening and funny book. Informed by advice from a Danish shaman, neuroscientists, prosthetists, animal behaviourists and Swiss goat herders, it explores what connects and separates us from other animals. Here are 10 things Thwaites learned:
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1. The gap between Homo sapiens and other animals is wide
Primates are “weird”, Thwaites says, for putting almost all their weight on their back legs; he required prosthetics to put 60% of his weight on his “front legs”. His pelvis was also 135 degrees out of alignment. “I was sort of shocked at how bad a goat I was,” he says, “and I was really trying.”
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2. Storytelling makes us human
Many traits once thought to define Homo sapiens, such as complex language and the ability to use tools, have been demonstrated in other animals. Thwaites suggests the defining characteristic of being human is our ability to move backwards and forwards in time and think in stories.
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3. We have always wanted to be animals
“The Danish shaman that Thwaites visited as part of his research demonstrated how, through dance and imitation, it is possible to enter a “between-the-worlds state” and begin to see the world through the eyes of an animal. “It’s not like a flash of lightning and then you’re a wolf, it’s having different ideas about where the boundaries are,” says Thwaites.
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4. Obscure science is inspiring
He was most inspired by a visit to a microbiologist who was researching the goat rumen, the largest of its four stomachs. “There are tens of thousands of different organisms in the rumen. It’s inspiring that a poo-ey mixture that is still not understood allows a goat to live on grass.”
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5. Technology could help us connect with animals
He deployed a basic shamanistic principle – that physical imitation helps change consciousness – alongside the latest scientific work in prosthetics to build himself forelegs and trot like a goat. “Just being in that physical position probably helped,” he says. “All of a sudden, you are face and mouth first.” The goat’s reputation for eating everything is widely misunderstood – goats are curious, and touch and check things with their mouth, as we do with our hands.
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6. Being a goat is exhausting
Thwaites spent three days in Alpine meadows, doing his best to mix with a herd of goats. “No one was using that much energy, there weren’t wolves around, but it was still difficult" This physical discomfort “encroached” on his attempts to think like a goat.
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7. Acceptance is bliss
After some initial wariness, his fellow goats came to tolerate the strange GoatMan among them. “I genuinely think I made a kind of goat friend” says Thwaites. “Not being able to see that goat as a goat but as another person was the goal.”
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8. Becoming another animal can make us more humble
“It’s important to remember every now and again that we are animals,” says Thwaites, “Being an animal would help us remember that there is no manifest destiny to the human species – we are just among all these other creatures.”
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9. Being a goat could be the new mindfulness
“Animals are very in the moment. They don’t have an idea of the future or the past as a narrative that they tell themselves. The mindfulness-wellness sphere is all about being present in the now – it’s remembering that you’re an animal, being present in your physical body, being in nature; it’s a way to engage with your less self-conscious side.”
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10. GoatMan will stalk the fields again
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You can learn more about Thomas Thwaites and his projects in his website:
Meet the Goat Man
For being the Beaver's contractor, we need to communicate with beavers and make sure we understand their will. But, how can we interpret their signs?
We did some research about ways to communicate with animals, also specifically how to communicate with beavers.
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We were surprised by the fact that actually many scientists and artists have already dealt with the same issue before. Communication with animals may be less difficult than we think, first thing we need to de is to redefine what we consider "language".
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1. Context
2. Thomas Thwaites
3. Michel Leclair
4. Tierra de Fuego
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Leave It To Beavers (Full Documentary)
Michael Eclair, Gatineau Park Ottawa
Michel Leclair -
The Beaver Whisperer
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There are unique ways to manage beavers and create a peaceful co-existence. Michel Leclair The Beaver Whisperer successfully managed beavers for over 30 years, including within the 360 km2 Gatineau Park with over 300 beaver colonies. Michel is also the owner/operator of Eco-Odyssee in Wakefield, Qc; a 500 acre eco-park and beaver habitat, explorable by paddle boat.
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For years, Michel had to control beaver activity by dynamiting dams and killing beavers. His work would make him feel unhappy, yet the efficient and industrious rodents would quickly rebuild, blocking culverts and flooding roads. So, as depicted in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary The Beaver Whisperer, Leclair decided to work with the beavers. The sound of running water motivates them, indicating a threat to their lodge. Since a beaver lodge must be in water deep enough to permit entry below the ice in winter, any flowing water must be stopped. In one case, a tape recorder playing the sound of running water was left in an area populated by beavers. Within hours, the device was “dammed”—buried in mud!
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The Method
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Since the sound of moving water motivates them to build dams, he produced the sound of running water by placing posts in streams, directing the beavers to build in locations where he wanted a dam to be. Today, he runs an efficient water management system. As Leclair describes in The Beaver Whisperer, the process of human dam-building—even for a small dam—requires expensive and time-consuming design, engineering reports, environmental assessments and construction contracts. Instead, Leclair coaxes the beavers to do the job for free in a matter of days, once he directs them to the work site.
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Leclair’s stroke of brilliance was finding a way to modify beaver dams so they continue to meet their builders’ needs, if not their loftiest ambitions, while regulating water levels to satisfy human requirements. He did this by inserting a long pipe through the base of the dam and enclosing the upstream end in a wire cage to prevent the beavers from plugging the opening. With the intake placed at the desired maximum water height, the pipe drains the pond until it drops to the chosen level and leaves the rest for the beavers. Any time the water rises above the intake, the siphoning resumes. Leclair’s pond leveler system has been refined over the years and modified to fit different situations, but the basic principle remains unchanged.
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Sources:
http://www.nbmca.on.ca/site/docs/May%202017%20Beaver%20Management%20Workshop%20Flyer.pdf
https://www.tomorrowsworld.org/magazines/2013/september-october/consider-the-beaver
“Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver”, Frances Backhouse
Goats in Switzerland
Google (authorized for reuse)
Tierra de Fuego​
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In Tierra de Fuego, Chile, there’s a big discussion going on about beavers. Beavers were introduced by humans to the island in 1946 for creating a “farm” for the fur industry. Once the fur went out of fashion, they stopped being killed so the population of beavers grew to the number of approximately 100.000 individuals today. The beaver activity is now changing the landscape, and some ecologists want to remove the beaver from Tierra de Fuego to save the forest. Easiest option for that is killing the 100.000 beavers. The question is, is the life of those trees more valuable than the life of these animals?
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Scientists, artists and locals are working together to find a different solution for this problem. They want Beavers to take a part of the decision for their future. For that, they’re looking for ways to communicate with beavers.
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Camila Marambio has been observing the beavers in the forest. She defends the fact that even know the beavers were not naturally in the island from the beginning, they have greatly adapted to it, which makes them natives. After hours and hours of observing and listening, she’s starting to distinguish the different sounds that beavers produce, each of them with a different purpose: for communicating, you should learn how to listen. She has done some research about the native tribe of the island, the Selknam, who were also exterminated and put away from the island. She has met Lola, one of the few remaining natives, and learned from her the art of yeox, which Curanderos and Chamanes would sing to evoke places, people, animals and times. So have done other tribes through history all over the world. With intentions of becoming indigenous and native, she suggests the use of those yeox to save the boundaries of communication.
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It’s well known that beavers use smell to communicate identify their territory. They produce an oily substance with a strong scent that helps them communicate and distinguish different beaver families. They will know where they’re welcome, and where they’re invading another’s family dam. Artists, scientists and locals researching in Tierra del Fuego are working on a way to communicate with beavers in their language: through a scent, experimenting then on field to see how the beavers react.
Puerto de Ideas Valparaíso 2013. Diálogo entre castores, científicos y artistas en Tierra del Fuego: CAMILA MARAMBIO
Thomas Thwaites (Goat Man) | TNW Conference | A holiday from being human
Skeleton of a rumiant (left) and a human skeleton in a similar position (right)
Google (authorized for reuse)
Context
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Zoosemiotics is the semiotic study of the use of signs among animals. It was developed by semiotician Thomas Sebeok based on the theories of German-Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll. The field interprets signs that are not communicative in the traditional sense, such as camouflage, mimicry, courtship behavior etc. The field also studies cross-species communication, for example between humans and animals.
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Human–animal communication may be observed in everyday life. The interactions between pets and their owners, for example, reflect a form of dialogue. A dog being scolded is able to grasp the message by interpreting the owner's stance, tone of voice and body language. This communication is two-way, as owners can learn to discern the subtle differences between barks and meows. Communication (often nonverbal) is also significant in equestrian activities such as dressage.
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One scientific study has found that 30 bird species and 29 mammal species share the same pattern of pitch and speed in basic messages, so humans and those 59 species can understand each other when they express "aggression, hostility, appeasement, approachability, submission and fear”.
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Scientists reckon humans will be communicating with dolphins by 2021. Swedish language technology company Gavagai AB is working with KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to create the dolphin language dictionary.
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Sophisticated algorithms will record sounds made by bottlenose dolphins and will store them in a database. "We know that dolphins have a complex communication system, but we don’t know what they are talking about yet." Biologists believe their own language could be complex as humans'. There is also a common conception that dolphins can empathize with us.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoosemiotics
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3543919/humans-communicate-with-dolphins-by-2021/
We know that dolphins have a complex communication system
Google (authorized for reuse)
59 species can understand each other when they express "aggression, hostility, appeasement, approachability, submission and fear”.
Google (authorized for re-use)
